Stillbright

by Daniel M Ford

  Then the sorcerer repeated his motion, and another blade slid straight through a seam in his armor, spearing his calf to the ground.

  The Arm of the Mother sagged back to his knees, exhausted, gritting his teeth so hard against the pain that he heard them grinding, felt blood trickling inside his mouth.

  “So you do know when you are beaten.” The sorcerer took another half step closer, and Allystaire searched for any last reserves of strength to gather for a leap, but he found none.

  Behind him he heard a shriek, crying, hysteria. He couldn’t pick voices out. He knew only that he was failing them and they wept to see it.

  “And more importantly, they know when you are beaten. As do your fellows—for have they not abandoned you?”

  It was only then that Allystaire realized he did not know where Torvul or Idgen Marte were, and he felt a tiny spark of hope flicker to life within him.

  “Never.” He lifted his head in time to see Idgen Marte appear out of the darkness behind the sorcerer, knife in hand. She plunged it towards his robed breast, but with a wave of his hand and a flare of yellow in the darkness, she was flung away, describing an arc several yards upward into the air. Allystaire heard her shriek as she landed, heard the crunch of bone shattering.

  “Well, that accounts for one of them. Both of you must be studied, of course, most carefully. What you managed was quite impressive, to destroy so many of our constructs. And your powers show promise. Primitive, but intriguing. Well. It is your body that must be studied.” The sorcerer gestured lazily, and Allystaire felt more cold shocks of pain as the other Battle-Wights slid their blade hands into his flesh, in his side, in his arms, his shoulders, his back.

  Gethmasanar opened his mouth but suddenly paused.

  A low, deep rumbling sound rose in the night. A liquid sound, but not water. Something deeper.

  Something like molten stone given a voice.

  Torvul, Allystaire thought dimly, for thought was leaving him as blood trickled from nearly a dozen wounds. But I’ve never heard him sing like this.

  The song was thunderous, bone-rattlingly deep. It rumbled through the earth beneath him. It thrummed in his ears with power.

  “Ah, the dwarf. And what will be your play? Surely something more subtle than a knife in the dark. A potion, a puff of smoke? Flame? An acid?”

  “No.” Torvul spoke through clenched teeth, and though his singing stopped, Allystaire felt the song continuing to resonate in the air and the earth. “Only a talk with my mother.”

  “A prayer? If your goddess was going to deliver you a miracle, dabbler, she would’ve done it by now.”

  The dwarf stepped into the wan circle of light the few soldiers bearing torches threw, and he knelt. His potion bags and pouches were all but empty, and he had neither cudgel nor crossbow. “Her Ladyship is not my mother,” Torvul said, and Allystaire knew from his tone that his face was twisted with that maddeningly knowing smile as he spoke, though the darkness hid his features.

  The dwarf knelt, placed a hand upon the ground, and resumed his song. The power of it raised the hair on Allystaire’s arms and neck.

  The sorcerer’s answering laugh was cut off when something flew through the night air and took him in the stomach. He was knocked a step backwards, but recovered quickly.

  Torvul lifted his hand from the ground, still singing, pouring forth a song of deep places and old wisdom, and as his hand moved, the very earth rose from behind the sorcerer and wrapped around him, trying to pull him into its depths.

  There was a bright flare of bilious yellow, and the earth melted away from Gethmasanar. He stepped forward, his hands completely alight with the yellow fire that normally trickled from his fingertips and eyes.

  “STONESINGER!”

  Allystaire was slipping ever closer towards the abyss of unconsciousness from loss of blood. Already he could not feel his feet, his hands. His heart was a dull throb in his chest, a faint tattoo in his ears.

  But he knew the sound of fear in a man’s voice when he heard it.

  Torvul’s song continued to coax stones out of the dirt, to hurl waves of earth at the sorcerer, who continued to cut them out of the air or deflect them with the blunt force of his power.

  They were a study in contrasts. While the sorcerer cursed and raged and hurled yellow fire from his hands, his eyes, even his mouth, the dwarf knelt motionless upon the earth, which thrummed to his call.

  As bolts of pure energy flew at Torvul, hunks of earth ripped themselves free of the ground and floated into the air to absorb them. Other rocks pulled free and flew at the sorcerer, and some began to strike him.

  And then a second robed form materialized behind the first, and the yellow power that filled the air was joined with blue.

  Suddenly it was all Torvul could do to keep himself covered. Allystaire could hear, dimly, the dwarf’s voice going hoarse, could see the first bolt that slipped through his defenses.

  He felt himself slide another notch towards oblivion. His vision turned grey and faded.

  Allystaire heard Torvul’s song grow weaker, and thought, I am sorry, My Lady. I have failed. I am sorry, Gideon. Sorry, my son.

  And then just before his mind went blank and his heart stopped sounding in his ears, he heard an answer in his mind. A curious, distant voice, that said three words.

  Son?

  Allystaire?

  Father?

  * * *

  Inside the Temple, Gideon sat up beneath the altar. He stood, his eyes widened, and then he disappeared. He had come and gone so fast that almost no one in the Temple noticed it, so intent were they on the battle that raged outside.

  No one, that is, except for the Voice of the Mother, who fell against the altar, crying tears of joy.

  * * *

  The survivors of the Battle of Thornhurst who saw the Will of the Mother confront the sorcerers agreed that it was a terrible and frightening thing, even if the rest of the details varied.

  Some said that he was a giant wreathed in terrible flame. Others, a nearly invisible outline, barely a man. A few said that he was a dragon, huge and terrible and breathing the power of a storm.

  Still others said it was just a slim, bald youth in a robe, who looked calmly at the sorcerers hurling their unnatural fire, raised his hands, and said, “No.”

  Both of them, the blue and the yellow, ceased to attack the dwarf and turned their full attentions on Gideon, bombarding him with the power they wielded. Blue and yellow light both disappeared before his outstretched hand, as if it never even touched him.

  But the two drew on more and more of their power. The skin of the one who wielded the blue energy split and cracked, the light that filled him pouring out, till he was barely in the shape of a man any longer.

  And this, it seemed, began to overwhelm the Will, who stepped back, quailing against the onslaught he was trying to absorb.

  It seemed, again, as though all might be lost. And it might have been, if not for the Islandman, whose name, and what he was doing there, no story and no song recorded.

  * * *

  His scream. That’s what got him, in the end. Nyndstir had never been the quiet sort, never been one to sneak and stick a blade in the back. He wasn’t some dumb inlander knight prattling about honor and facing a man straight on, but he’d never been a skulker either, not really.

  So he was really freezing tired of skulking. And it seemed like the boy was having a bad time of it once Iriphet had started screaming in a language Nyndstir didn’t know and didn’t want to know.

  When he went for Iriphet’s back, raising his axe high, intending to cleave straight through the sorcerer’s unprotected neck, he wasn’t sure what might happen when steel met—well, whatever the sorcerer was becoming. Because it was like the terrible light within him was consuming the flesh around it.

  But he did scre
am, a long and bloody cry for vengeance, and he swung.

  And his axe bit deep into something.

  But the other sorcerer turned, saw him, and snarled. A beam shot straight from Gethmasanar’s extended finger and pierced Nyndstir in the chest. It took him in the heart.

  As he was falling to the ground, he had a vague sense that the battle around him had changed.

  And then he felt a vast and awesome presence looking upon him.

  Did I right the course?

  He was met with a voice that sounded like waves in a storm on the open sea. The rage and the terror in it were so great that he could not make out any words. Then it was as if the storm parted for the sun. The roar of the ocean died, and there was only warmth.

  Yes, the sunlight said, in a voice that put him in mind of his mother. You steered true.

  Nyndstir Obertsun died a happier man than he ever expected.

  * * *

  When the Islandman burst from the trees, Gideon got all the opening he needed. Iriphet’s gambit had been unexpected, trying to make himself a conduit for the very power that all the Knowing drew from, pouring it into Gideon in an attempt to burn him out.

  But there was still a mortal shell there. As Gideon now understood, there had to be a mortal shell for the magic to attach itself to, for the will to work anything in the mortal world. And a mortal shell, no matter how well protected, how ancient, no matter what power it housed, had little defense against an axe buried in its spine.

  Gideon pulled the power straight out of Gethmasanar’s body then. The sorcerer’s yellow eyes winked out and he crumbled to the ground.

  Iriphet was a longer time in dying. Gideon had to rework some of his newly absorbed power and use it to build a barrier around the conduit the dying sorcerer had opened. The power Iriphet’s flesh had been hooked to was now a glowing ball of intense blue floating in the air.

  Gideon boxed it in, shut it off, watched as it grew smaller and smaller, denser and tighter, until it finally winked out. The backlash against his barrier drove him to his knees for a moment.

  Then both sorcerers and Baron Lionel Delondeur lay dead upon the battlefield. The Battle-Wights that held Allystaire’s limp form collapsed, and Gideon rushed to his side.

  Chapter 41

  Two Awakenings

  Allystaire awoke in a place that was bright, and yet had no source of light that he could see. He felt that he was lying on a bier of some kind, but then the stone beneath him became a bed so soft he wanted to weep at the feel of it. The weight of his armor was replaced with the thinnest, lightest linen he’d ever felt. Or was it silk?

  No amount of softness could mitigate the pain of his limbs. Her Strength had fled and the days of using it were now telling. And there were the wounds. He felt as though no part of him was not bleeding. His side, both of his arms, his calf, his back, had all been punched by the bladed hands of Battle-Wights.

  The pain of his broken nose was an old friend compared to the rest of him. Comforting, almost.

  He could manage only a thin, airless moan. He tried to turn his head but his muscles protested and he flopped weakly against the down cushion.

  “Oh, My Knight,” he heard a voice breathe. Despite the overwhelming pain, the voice sent a thrill, a surge of love through him, and he managed to lift his head.

  She stood at the foot of the bed he lay upon, a tear sliding down Her cheek.

  “Goddess,” he croaked, his voice barely audible even in his own ears. “Why do you…”

  Then She was standing at the side of the bed, instead of the foot, bending over him. “I do not weep out of sorrow, my Allystaire,” she said. “Though the hurts you have taken, and those of My People who were lost, are enough to drive me to it. No, My Knight, I weep for pride. Pride in my choices.”

  Her hand stroked his cheek, and instantly the pain of his body began to recede beneath the touch of her fingertips and the surge of longing it brought. “I am sorry I failed you,” he murmured, letting his eyes close. “Is this death? Is this the next world?”

  For the first and only time, Allystaire saw the face of the Goddess he served twist in uncertainty.

  “You did not fail me,” She replied, leaning closer to him. “The Longest Night has ended and My Will ushers in the dawn.”

  Suddenly in his mind’s eye Allystaire could see the image of Gideon standing upon the field over his broken body. The boy had one hand upraised, the unnatural darkness rolled back from the skies, and the sun pulled itself over the horizon.

  “Am I dead, then?” Allystaire wondered aloud again. “If I died in your service, saving your people, My Lady, I would ask nothing more.”

  She leaned closer to him. He feared to open his eyes for the dazzling radiance that loomed so close; even behind his eyelids he could feel the power of Her Light. “Your labors are not yet done. Yet as I told you at your vigil, there is but one gift I have left to give you.”

  The sheet that lay atop him was twitched aside, and then the Goddess’s mouth was upon his and Her hands moving upon his body. Under Her kiss, Her touch, the pain, his muddled thoughts, and the question he had asked that had not been answered all fled before desire.

  * * *

  Allystaire woke up again in darkness. He sat straight up in a bed, gasping for air. His entire body was aflame. Not with pain, but with the insane, burning desire the Goddess’s love had brought forth in him.

  The bed beneath him creaked, and he saw a shadow in the room with him.

  This bed, this room, was real.

  His heart sank.

  “How long?” he croaked.

  “Nine days.” Idgen Marte answered. She came forward to his bedside and sat down upon it, easing him onto his back with one finger pressed into his chest. He was too weak to resist.

  “The first of the days that you lay here…” Idgen Marte’s voice trailed off, low and husky in the dark. “Allystaire. I’ve seen a lot of dead men in my time. I would swear you were one of them. We were ready to carry you into the Temple and lay your body out. Gideon wouldn’t let us.”

  Allystaire sat silently in the dark and let her words wash over him. “For a day?”

  “I couldn’t find your breath, the beat of your heart. Your wounds didn’t bleed. But the boy insisted, and after what he’d done, there was no arguing. Two days later he let us into this room and you were breathing again, but, Cold take me, you weren’t here. I couldn’t feel you, with my mind, though I sat next to you.”

  “I think I—”

  “Don’t explain,” Idgen Marte said. “The past day, as I’ve sat here…sounded like an eventful one. You talk in your sleep.”

  With Idgen Marte, Allystaire was beyond embarrassment. He swung his legs off the bed and stood.

  Then Idgen Marte was at his side, helping ease him back into the bed as he fell. “We did the best we could with my sewing, and Torvul’s potions once you’d breath back in your body. But you’re still in a bad way.”

  Allystaire grunted, placed the palm of his left hand on his chest, and poured Her Gift into himself. “Am I?”

  Then he stood. “How? What happened? What have I missed?”

  “A moment.” Idgen Marte struck flame on the end of one of Torvul’s sticks, brought it to the wick of a lamp, and the room instantly brightened. She turned to face him, her left arm bound to her chest in a sling. “While I’m answering, could you?”

  He nodded and laid his hand on her arm, winced as it snapped back together. She nearly fell to a knee, and he saw her bite the inside of her cheek to keep from crying out. She sank back into a chair as she started unwinding the sling that had bound her arm up.

  “How? The answer, I s’spose, is Gideon. He came back. Killed the sorcerers. Says you brought him back. I expect you’ll want to talk to him about that.”

  “I will,” Allystaire agreed, thinking on his final
words before slipping from consciousness. Perhaps from life. “As soon as I might.”

  “As to what you’ve missed.” Idgen Marte’s tone was a bit evasive. “Well, Chaddin and Landen seem set to get right back to figuring out whether Delondeur gets a Baron or a Baroness now that their father is dead.”

  Allystaire sighed. “How have you kept them off each other?”

  “For a day or two, thinking you dead, nobody really had the stomach for a fight. And then, well, perhaps get dressed, come downstairs with me, eh?”

  Allystaire nodded and reached for the lamp. He found the finery that had been made for him upon the arrival of Fortune’s delegation, many weeks ago, and slipped into it, following with his boots.

  He saw neither his hammer nor his sword. Because they are both broken, he reminded himself. He realized, finally, that he was in one of the smaller rooms in Timmar’s Inn.

  He descended the stairs to find the taproom was more full than he’d expected, and brightly lit with a roaring fire, lamps, and several fat candles burning upon the bar. When he saw who sat scattered around it, it was all he could do not to drop the lamp he’d carried down.

  Torvul, Mol, and Gideon he had expected.

  But not Ivar, Rede, or Cerisia.

  And certainly not the two people, man and woman, who rose to greet him. The man was fair, with pale skin and fine blond hair that reached his shoulders. The woman was a bit shorter than Allystaire, and a good deal more slender, but there was kinship in their features. Where his were blunted or scarred, hers were refined and unblemished. Her eyes were darker even than his, and her skin lacked most of the wind and weather-burn his had sustained. Allystaire fumbled for words, and finally settled on his sister’s name.

  “Audreyn?”

  The End of Book 2 of the Paladin Trilogy

  Acknowledgments

  Thanks to Andrew, Kyle, Gwen, Melanie, and the entire SFWP crew. Thanks again to Rion for pointing me to them. Thanks to Jacob for the map and the beta reading. Thanks to Josh, Stephanie, Yeager, Sarah, Andy, and Jason for the same. Last but always most, to Lara, who is a lamp when it is dark.