Julia screamed.
At the sound, whatever had been holding Peter back was suddenly gone, and he found himself running forward. “No!”
But he was too far away. He needed two seconds to cross the distance, but Peras needed only one more step.
“No!”
The knife flashed forward.
Peras stumbled. It threw off his aim. He missed. He sidestepped to recover, but tripped again.
Peter didn’t slow down to see what had tripped him. He had time now! He launched himself at Peras.
Though Peter was barely half Peras’s height and less than half his weight, Peras was so off-balance that Peter’s weight sent him tumbling away from the light and toward the vortex swirling outside of it.
Peras dropped the knife in his fall and landed sprawling right at the edge of the light shield.
He stood up, enraged. He whipped around toward Peter, and Peter saw in Peras’s face the same fury he’d seen on the rafts.
Peras roared and spread his arms like a bear. His bulging muscles seemed to double in size. Veins surfaced across his body. He grew nearly a foot taller, and he straightened to his full height.
His eyes, which had never fully returned to their baby-blue innocence, transformed once more into vile, bottomless black irises that seemed to channel the Shadow directly.
“You will see,” Peras said, though his was now the voice of the Shadow, “that I have weapons too. One that stands inside your precious light!”
“Oh,” Louisa said, as if just noticing the problem. “Well, we can easily deal with that.” With a flick of her wrist, which held the talisman, the edge of the light shield moved, changing its shape.
And now Peras was outside of it.
For a moment, Peras appeared confused again. Despite his new size and monstrous appearance, he seemed befuddled. He reached toward the shield, but his hands struck it as if it were solid and not just a bright light. He pushed it. He struck it. He pounded on it. His face clouded and he flew into a rage, stepping back and slamming himself against it with enough force to break through stone walls.
Peter stood and rejoined the group. Someone else was getting up too, and Peter realized that this person must’ve been what Peras had tripped over.
But the body was very small.
“Alexander?” Peter said.
The boy smiled at him as if he’d just slain a dragon. Maybe he had. Again Peras threw himself into the shield, and again it held.
Louisa sang.
The two come together; the two become one …
Peter looked at Julia. She had tears on her cheeks, but the look on her face was now one of tentative hope. She joined Louisa in song, as did Peter and the others.
With union comes power, control over all …
Outside the shield, the Shadow stopped spinning. Two points of glowing orange floated in the dark cavern, swaying side to side as if made of smoke. Or like the hypnotic stare of the cobra.
Peras ceased trying to burst through the shield. He turned his back to the group and looked instead into the eyes and fangs of the Shadow. “No, please.” He pressed his back against the shield and slid sideways. “I tried. You saw.”
The Shadow’s face shimmered with undulations of smoke. It moved high above Peras, and Peter thought he saw a flash of its profile. It looked like a dragon of myth. Or a crocodile. Lengthened face, jutting lower jaw, giant malformed fangs crisscrossing in a soul-shredding smile.
“You failed,” the Shadow said. It sounded less like a statement and more like a judgment.
Peras ran. In five steps he could no longer be seen. But the Shadow had no trouble tracking him in the darkness. The dark shape swiveled and struck downward with the speed of a snake.
Flooded by light, the shadow outdone,
The host shall return; the darkness shall fall.
As Louisa led them into another round of the song, Peter searched the darkness. The cavern seemed empty again. Could that be it? Would the Shadow be satisfied with punishing the failure of one of its servants? Would it now leave them al —
Something slammed against the roof of the light shield.
The group cried out in alarm and bent their knees, as if bracing for the volcano to fall on their heads.
Something heavy and dark lay on the top of the shield. But it didn’t have the right angles to be rock or the right consistency to be lava. It was indistinct at first, but then Peter saw a shape he recognized.
A human hand. Then the arm and body to which it was connected. Large muscles … black coils that transformed into blond strands.
Peras. His body pressed against the surface of the shield, restored to its human proportions. He tried to stand to his feet.
Then suddenly he flew away. Or, rather, was lifted away. His body vanished like it had never been there.
Wham.
Peras’s body slammed against the shield behind the group. It didn’t linger there this time, but was lifted away again. The scratching resumed, and the vortex began spinning faster.
Wham, wham, wham.
Peter was appalled. The Shadow was using Peras’s body as a blunt instrument to beat against the shield in search of a weak spot.
Peter lost track of the hammering. Peras became a soggy indistinct mass.
As Peras’s body oozed down the slope of the shield, Peter closed his eyes, and his logical mind made a feeble attempt to understand this protection surrounding them. A clear dome stood overhead, a shield created by the power of the Lord of Hosts. Peter put his logical mind back to sleep for a while.
He didn’t pity Peras. The man — if a man he was — had chosen darkness. He had betrayed them all more than once and had come a hair’s breadth away from killing Louisa. He probably would have killed the rest of them as well. But Peter couldn’t imagine the fear and pain of being slammed around by a frustrated manifestation of evil.
As it had before, the Shadow plucked up Peras’s body. But it seemed a more violent withdrawal this time, and Peter glimpsed Peras being hurled away. Several seconds passed, during which the group neared the end of the song again. Then Peter heard, or imagined he heard, the soft whump of a body landing in a heap far away.
So ended the brief but fearsome reign of Peras the Betrayer.
Peter saw the bodiless face of the Shadow again. Its eyes shone like twin coals removed from a raging furnace. Somehow it looked even more furious than before.
Louisa looked directly at Peter. “Now we must sing our strongest!”
The two come together; the two become one …
The Shadow bellowed. Its face rose high over them.
With union comes power, control over all …
The twin orange glows shattered, exploding out to empower the black fog. It spun around them anew. The scratching increased. But it was no longer merely wind and sound. Flotsam rotated in the cloud now. Volcanic rock. Stalactites. Boulders. Molten rock that splintered upon impact with the shield.
Flooded by light, the shadow outdone …
Boulders the size of train engines fell against the shield.
Suddenly, Limas was shouting in Peter’s face. “It’s bringing the mountain down on us!”
The sound of multiple heavy impacts against the shield drummed like an avalanche. The debris began to pile up all around the edge of the shield. The Lord of Hosts might keep them from being crushed — but would they be buried alive? Would they be stuck down here forever, alive but never free?
Peter saw pinpricks of fire in the chaos outside the shield. At first he thought they were splashes of lava breaking against their dome. But they didn’t fall … they floated and spun and grew.
Julia’s face swam in front of him. “It’s the Shadow,” she said, though she looked like she was shouting. “It’s burning up from the inside!”
Peter looked back out into the maelstrom. Could she be right? Her proposed solution fit the evidence, but how could she possibly know? Around him, the people of Aedyn stood or crouched or sat o
n the ground, observing it all like people watching a building fire. In shock and unable to do anything but watch.
And sing.
The host shall return; the darkness shall fall.
Instead of starting the song over, as she’d done so many times before, Louisa sang the last line again. And again.
The host shall return; the darkness shall fall.
The host shall return; the darkness shall fall.
The host shall return; the darkness shall fall.
The sparks of flame enlarged until they merged into one another. Until there was more flame than darkness. Until there was only flame.
The Shadow shrieked and the tornado became a hurricane of fire. Tongues of flame flashed over the shield like an explosion, like a slush of scalding embers spraying from a furnace, like exhaust from the very core of the sun.
Then, with a scream so loud Peter dropped to the ground into a ball and wept, the Shadow fell silent and everything went dark.
Peter covered his head, though he knew it would do nothing against the landslide that would crush him now that the shield had failed.
But nothing struck him. He waited, still clenched against the weight that would fall. Nothing came. He opened his eyes. Or perhaps his eyes were already open. Either way, he couldn’t see anything.
Am I dead?
He heard rustling around him. The sound of movement. Then whispers and groans of fear.
“Arise, men and women of Aedyn.” It was Louisa’s voice. She sounded strong.
Peter lifted his head and turned toward her voice. “Louisa?”
“You have prevailed, servants of the Lord of Hosts,” Louisa said. “The Shadow is no more!”
As if it had been planned, at her words a light flared above them. But it wasn’t the talisman or even the shield.
It was sunlight.
CHAPTER
15
Julia blinked at the golden light streaming into the side of the volcano. It had to be late morning or early afternoon. But what day was it?
The light bathed them all in its friendly glow. Around her she saw the survivors of Aedyn. She helped Alyce and Alexander to their feet, then went to Peter. He seemed fine — but was as amazed as she felt, judging from his wide-open eyes.
Julia went to Louisa then. She was the only one who didn’t seem to have spent any time on the ground.
Louisa placed the cord of the talisman over her neck and let it rest against her chest again. “Well,” she said. “That was an adventure.”
Julia laughed. The laughter burst out of her like something between a guffaw and a sob, and it loosened a landslide of tears and chuckles, both in her and several of those around her.
Alexander tugged on Louisa’s hand. “Healer, you’re hurt.”
Louisa looked at the back of her hand. A cut a couple of centimeters long stretched along the base of her right hand. “Oh, so I am. Wonder how that happened.”
Alexander took Louisa’s hand in both of his and looked at it intently. Then he placed his face over the wound. Julia couldn’t see what he was doing — was he kissing it? When he withdrew his head, the cut was gone.
Louisa laughed then. She lifted her face to the sunlight and laughed as if the Lord of Hosts had played a marvelous joke on her to make her happy. She swept Alexander into her arms and hugged him. “I knew it!”
A thought struck Julia, and she looked up. The sun was high overhead, but beaming right at them. “Everyone,” she said, pointing. “The dark cloud — it’s gone!”
The group looked up and gasped. Julia saw them all staring upward together and thought they looked like sunflowers gazing at the sun, basking in its warmth and love.
She couldn’t actually be certain the whole shadowy cloud was gone, but it was the first time since the eruption that she’d been able to see sun and sky directly overhead. She had a feeling the shadow was completely burned away. As if to confirm her guess, her face was brushed by something else she hadn’t enjoyed in a long time: a breeze of fresh air.
The group stood in a circle, holding one another, looking around. The debris of the Shadow’s passing lay about them in a perfect circle. Heaps of rock surrounded their open spot like the walls of a crater.
She saw Peter bend down and pick something up from the ground. He laughed and walked over to Gregory. “Here,” Peter said. “This is yours. I took it for the rafts when you were injured. I’m afraid it’s had an adventure all its own.”
Julia couldn’t see what it was, but Gregory chuckled, looked it over, and stuck it in his belt. Then she saw. Gregory’s knife.
Peter looked at her and smiled. He stepped closer and took her hand. Together they walked to Louisa, and the three of them joined hands.
“I don’t know what we’ll find out there,” Peter said, “but do you two have the same feeling I do, that our work here is finished — or nearly so?”
Julia nodded. “I do.”
Louisa had a faraway look in her eyes, but she finally nodded. When she did, she seemed to deflate. “You’re probably right.”
Julia thought she looked almost sad. “Still,” she said, trying to guess Louisa’s mood. “It will be sad to leave. Here, we were deliverers and healers and heroes of mighty conflicts. There, we’re just schoolchildren.”
Louisa stared away again. And then, with the deepest sigh Julia had ever seen her give, Louisa picked Alexander up again and headed toward the tumble of rocks leading up to the hole in the side of the volcano. “Come, everyone. Let’s begin. It’s time to walk again in the light.”
Despite the fact that the landslide had only just come to rest on the floor of the cavern, it proved remarkably stable as a staircase. Alexander was able to make the climb with no problem — and even Trevor didn’t have to rest any more than the others.
The group ended up finding a rift in the volcano wall much lower down than the hole they’d first seen the sun through, so the climb wasn’t very long. All the way up, Julia had scanned the floor of the cavern. She wasn’t sure what she was looking for: Peras’s body, the remains of the Shadow, maybe even Captain Ceres. But all she ever saw were rocks upon rocks.
Julia was the first to scramble up the final step into the open air. What she saw stunned her so deeply she didn’t warn anyone else. One by one the people of Aedyn climbed out and stood staring in stunned silence.
It was as if the volcano had never happened. What had been wasteland was now a living paradise. The greenest forest Julia had ever seen stretched over the island like a lush blanket. A cloud of low fog clung to the treetops as if the Lord of Hosts had just created all of this and it was still steaming a bit from being in an oven. The shadow was indeed gone. There was no sign of it anywhere. Clouds lazed overhead, promising a glorious sunset in a few hours.
Julia looked up the slope of the volcano. It seemed impossible, but it looked as if it hadn’t erupted in a thousand years. The slopes looked old and gray. There were no rivers of molten lava. No heat shimmering off the cone. No ash or smoke leaked — much less spewed — out of the top.
Julia cast her eyes to the horizon. Sunlight sparkled off the ocean like diamonds on a vast blue tablecloth. In the direction of Aedyn, she could make out a green shape toward the edge of her vision that seemed to float like a living vessel.
The plain they’d crossed before, upon which they’d faced the Gul’nog battle line, was overgrown with beautiful trees that swayed gently in the ocean wind. The Gul’nog themselves were gone. Her mind went to all the people of Aedyn who had fallen on this island— in the slave mines and at the cave during the Gul’nog attack. She had to believe that the Lord of Hosts had cared for their bodies when He renewed this place.
Julia found Louisa and Peter on either side of her. They didn’t speak. They just stared together at what the Lord of Hosts had done.
At length, someone pressed something into Julia’s hand. Gregory smiled at her. It was a luscious-looking pear.
“Fruit trees,” he said, sweeping his hand o
ver their view of the island. “The place is filled with them.” He took a monstrous bite out of another pear. “And it’s a good thing too, because all of a sudden my hunger has returned!”
They spent the next twenty minutes feasting on fruit of many kinds and enjoying the open air. Kelman and Orrin stretched out on the grassy slope and napped. Priscilla and Alyce and Imogene wove flowers into their hair. Peter and his raftsmen talked about the new rafts they were going to build — with paddles and rudders and even sails this time — to get the people back to Aedyn.
Julia found herself looking around for Gaius. This was about the time he usually showed up. But he was nowhere to be found. The Lord of Hosts had been so visible when they’d first come to Aedyn. His power and presence and voice were with them all the time then, it seemed. But the longer they’d stayed, the more He hid. The signs of His presence were still there, and sometimes quite powerfully, but they had turned more covert, more subtle.
Maybe that’s what it means to live in faith, she thought. Maybe you need the big signs of His love at first, but then He shows you how to see Him in the quiet ways. But no matter how He appears, He’s still guiding, still there.
“What’s that, Mother?” Alexander asked, pointing into the sky.
Julia followed his gaze. She saw a black speck against the blue dome of the sky. It wasn’t possible to see any distinct shape yet, but she knew in her heart what it was.
Peter said it for her. “It’s the falcon.”
Louisa nodded. “Come to take us home.”
Julia looked at them all. Her brother, her stepsister, Gregory, and the people who had come to be more than family to her. This was it, then. This was the end.
As the speck grew nearer, and it became clear that it was indeed the giant falcon, Julia and the others said their good-byes. Each of them seemed to have one person they saved for last.
Peter came last to Trevor, though Mitchell, Orrin, and Kelman stood close by.
“I have heard it said that soldiers who endure battle together become brothers,” Peter said, clasping Trevor’s forearms. “You men are like brothers to me now. I fear I will never see you again. Though it is not rational in the least to say this — you will always, always live in my heart.”
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