by K K Ness
Magus Ronan fared little better as the silvery net tightened over him. He stiffened like a board before falling to his knees and retching. Hafryn kicked away the firewhip and stood over the mage, looking ready to gut him.
Brianna appeared far more sanguine. With a smirk, she raised the staff and pressed the orb against the net. It disintegrated in a heartbeat. She stepped free.
Sonnen strode to meet her. Fire leapt from his hands and up his arms. Brianna shouted an unintelligible word, bloodied frost spewing from the orb. Sonnen met the attack, and the cavern reverberated with the crack of two elements colliding.
Brianna spun and pointed the orb at the remaining nets. Ice poured over the magi and soldiers. The sound of glass shattering rang out as the nets collapsed.
Magus Ronan rolled to his feet with a roar of triumph. His hand snapped out, and the firewhip leapt into his grip.
Snarling, Hafryn raised his sword and knocked away the first biting attack of the firewhip.
Fighting broke out across the cavern as Amasians and Roldaerian soldiers clashed. Elania and Blutark stood over the incapacitated magi. Their hands moved rapidly as they wove a glyph above each mage.
Then Magus Brianna gouged the staff against the ground, and the orb darkened like rotten blood. The stench of putrefaction flooded the cavern.
One of the shifters closest to Danil cried out as a sickly white mark showed on her arm. The soldier she fought abruptly staggered and collapsed mid-strike. He coughed up plumes of frost.
Danil watched in horror as the soldier grew still.
Magus Brianna smiled.
“She’s killing her own!” Hafryn cried.
“Pestilence and ice!” Sonnen roared. “Get back!”
It spread quickly, taking Amasian and Roldaerian alike. Cries rang out as fighters crumpled to the floor. The ice-rimed pestilence mottled the skin, eating away flesh.
Magus Brianna’s smile widened as screams and cries rang out.
Danil gazed down at his arms, startled to see them bare of the consuming ice. He could only surmise it had something to do with his connection to the magus, whose curse still lay over him.
A short distance away, Hafryn gave a soft gasp and fell to one knee.
With a smirk, Ronan kicked him in the side. Hafryn collapsed with a pained grunt. White ice showed along his arms.
The mage stood over him and swayed the tip of the firewhip above Hafryn’s face. “Beg for me, dog.”
Picking up a fallen sword, Danil roared as he swung at the firewhip.
It slithered to the side of its own volition.
Magus Ronan turned, blue eyes glittering. “Well, well. Haven’t you grown brave.” He stepped over Hafryn.
The wolf grabbed onto the mage’s breeches but Ronan kicked him away.
Danil took a step back, feeling a mix of relief and terror as the mage followed.
The firewhip snaked across the floor.
“I used this on the people of Farin,” Ronan taunted, giving the firewhip a flick. It hissed. “How they screamed and begged.”
Danil raised his sword. Behind him, he could hear the crackle and spit of fire and ice clashing. Sonnen, at least, seemed able to defy Magus Brianna’s spreading pestilence. The raging fire warmed across the nape of Danil’s neck.
Ronan flicked the handle of the firewhip. It snapped out.
Danil barely had time to block the forked tongue from striking his eye. He glowered at the mage as he tightened his grip on the blade.
“My friend here has already tasted your flesh, rat,” Ronan said. “Oh, but how it hungers for more.”
Danil stepped back again, all too aware of the battle raging behind him between Sonnen and Magus Brianna.
“You were promised to me, rat. I have been so very, very patient.”
The firewhip cracked upwards, hitting the sword with a loud clang. Danil flinched back, then quickly parried another biting blow. Ronan grinned, then sent the firewhip slithering along the floor before it flicked up and sank its forked tips into Danil’s knee.
He staggered with a yelp. The firewhip bit him again before he managed a lucky strike.
Ronan laughed, then uttered a strange word. The firewhip brightened to red and lashed out, knocking the sword from Danil’s grip.
He backed up, hands spread wide.
“Kneel, rat.”
Danil’s lips curled. “No.”
Ronan grinned and unleashed the firewhip with a flick.
On instinct, Danil caught the coiling magic with both hands. It wrapped around his hands and wrists and squeezed. He instinctively gripped tight as fire burned across his skin. The glyphs on both palms brightened, spilling golden light between his fingers.
For a moment, Danil smelt wild loam and spring rain. His grip intensified.
An urgent whispering filled his mind.
‘Tighter,’ it belled.
Danil convulsively clenched his fists. The firewhip sizzled against the House glyphs. Blood welled over. For a heartbeat, the firewhip flickered white before returning to red.
Ronan frowned.
‘Again.’
Against his better judgement, Danil obeyed. The firewhip whitened around his fists.
Ronan’s eyes narrowed. “What are you doing?”
A rushing sound filled his ears as Danil concentrated on the golden light spilling between his hands. Flecks buzzed about the edges. He reached out and called on them. They latched onto the firewhip.
“Stop what you’re doing,” Ronan ordered, pulling back on the firewhip.
‘Now.’
“Now!” Danil yelled. The golden light bit deep, engulfing the firewhip. The red sputtered out, and then a strange whirring sound filled the air.
Ronan released the handle, eyes widening.
A heartbeat later, the firewhip shattered in Danil’s hands. Splinters of cord, sharpened like glass, blew over Ronan in a backlash of power that sent the mage catapulting across the cavern. He struck the far wall with a bone-crunching snap.
“No!”
Danil whirled to see Magus Brianna barreling toward him, fingers claw-like. Her face was a rictus of fury.
A wall of flame suddenly blocked her path.
She spun back to Sonnen. The dragon was on his feet, his skin splotched with ice. But his eyes remained fiercely aflame. Fire arced up his arms.
“We are not done,” the dragon vowed as he straightened.
Brianna raised the staff. The ice pestilence rocked Sonnen back on his feet.
Danil picked up a fallen sword, skirting wide.
Magus Brianna tracked his movements with a small smile. “Stupid little guide. I’ll leave you to last so that you may enjoy the new world I have wrought. We will bathe in dragon blood together.”
With a guttural roar, Sonnen snapped fire at her. Brianna brushed it aside with a sweep of the blood orb.
Gripping the hilt tight in both hands, Danil waited for her attention to focus fully on Sonnen. She skirted out of easy reach.
Then he felt something tug at him. The quiet whisperings he’d heard in the cavern and beyond returned. Danil vigorously shook his head to clear it.
‘Join us,’ it rang.
Danil’s eyes turned to the well. The tug grew stronger, like a physical yearning. The scent of wildness and freshly turned soil filled the cavern.
‘Come.’ The word was like a clarion in his bones.
He dropped the sword. The roar of fire smashing up against pestilence hissed out behind him.
Danil cautiously climbed the three steps and looked down into the well. The glowing water was a startling, cooling blue that beckoned him.
‘Come,’ it repeated.
With a slow breath, Danil lowered his hand into the water. Blood swirled and then dissipated into the depths. The House glyph on his palm dropped flecks of gold into the bottom of the well.
The water stirred.
Something grabbed hold of Danil’s wrist.
“No!” Brianna screamed.
With a gentle tug, it pulled him into the water.
26
They stride the cavern, seeking darkness.
They see it in thin lines of black ice that gorge upon an iridescent light barely still flickering with life.
“This one remains with us,” they say, and brush their fingers across the blackness. The tendrils fall apart like gossamer. The iridescent one brightens, strengthens, and green eyes open with wonder.
They decide it is a pretty green.
There are more in need of aid, and so they sweep across the cavern until the blackness is no more.
Dozens of greyfolk lie supine while the black tendrils feast upon them.
“These are also ours.”
They break apart the tendrils, and slowly, life returns.
Among the fallen are five greyfolk with a flickering of iridescence in their bellies.
“We are not yours,” they say, and return the iridescence to themselves.
All that remains is the Corrupt One, spinning her web like a spider. At her side is a revenant of Darkness.
They remember a time before Darkness, when they had romped across the surface untrammeled by exploitation, the sun on their backs charging them with warmth. They remember tasting the triumph of spring, the first shoots unfurling from the seed, the gambol of life on fertile soil, the chittering in burrows and on branches.
“We have waited long enough.”
They take the revenant from the Corrupt One, and dissolve the last remnant of the one who had so twisted them and left them in the cold and quiet.
The Corrupt One raises her hands and spews forth blackness, but her rage is like a pebble on a mountainside.
All that remains is the stolen iridescence roiling in her belly. They take that, too.
Then they return to the wellspring, where green purpose burbles once more.
27
Danil returned to awareness.
He leaned over the water, his fingers skimming the surface. In his other hand sat a glass orb whose color ran clear like icicles in the winter sun. He stared at it, but felt no remnant of Kaul within.
A soft query sounded at the back of his mind.
With a nod, Danil lowered the orb into the water. Something swirled around to gently take it from his grasp.
“Impossible!” Magus Brianna shrieked.
She stood at the base of the steps, hair wild and clothes askew. Her eyes were no longer milky, returned instead to their previous pale blue. Her skin appeared similarly revived, no longer marked by corruption. At her feet lay the shattered remains of the bone staff, the blood orb gone.
Behind her, the cavern stirred to life. Amasians and Roldaerians soldiers alike rose to their feet, dazed. A few soldiers openly wept at having been so close to death. The five magi scurried to the pillars, only to be blocked by the nearby shifters. Only Ronan didn’t stir, lying crumpled and unmoving against the far wall.
Hafryn padded toward the steps, green eyes filled with curiosity and wonder. “Fala?” he said, staring.
Sonnen strode up to Danil and took hold of his chin. He gazed deeply into Danil’s eyes, and Danil wondered what he saw there.
“It is not impossible,” the dragon said, releasing him. Sonnen turned to glower down at Brianna. “He is of Roldaerian blood but with the House of Corros on his palm. As once was Kaul before him, Danil is of both our kingdoms, mage.”
She shook with fury. “The well is mine!”
Flames showed in Sonnen’s eyes. “Perhaps you have not yet noticed, Corrupt One. By Danil’s will, the well and its leylines are closed to you. All kiandrite is closed to you. And ever will it be!”
Brianna’s face hardened with fury. She raised her hands, fingers claw-like as she snarled an unintelligible word. Nothing happened, and Brianna gaped at her hands in horror.
Sonnen took a single step down. “In your quest for power, you sought to become the anathema of our shared magicks. You thought, like Kaul before you, that a lodestone would bend to your will,” he growled. “But the leylines have chosen a new custodian. One who will heal the damage wrought by your machinations.” The dragon’s voice rang out across the cavern like a proclamation.
A couple of shifters nodded in agreement.
“He means you, fala,” Hafryn noted with a grin.
Danil looked at Sonnen in surprise.
The dragon ignored him, taking another step down toward the mage. She swallowed, then lifted her chin.
“But what to do with you, hmn?” the dragon rumbled. He studied her and then swept a flame-filled gaze to the five magi pressed up against the wall beside the pillars. They shuffled their feet nervously. “Indeed, you are worthy of death.”
The leylines set to murmuring. Danil craned to hear.
“And yet, not here,” Sonnen continued. His face revealed no hint that he’d heard the leylines. “This place has already been befouled by your malevolence. We will not taint its return to us by spilling blood.” He smiled humorlessly, baring teeth. “I suggest you don’t ever attempt to return to Amas. The well is rather angry with you, and its memory is long.”
Brianna cast a nervous glance at the well. The glowing liquid stirred as if to slosh up against the sides.
“Danil, if you will,” Sonnen murmured.
Startled, he stepped forward.
“Like so,” the dragon said, weaving an intricate symbol into the air.
Danil followed suit. The ground below him swelled with power.
Brianna’s eyes widened, seeming to recognize the glyph that took shape. “No!”
Danil completed the glyph. It held in the air before him, gleaming like gold, before sweeping across the cavern. It carried Brianna off her feet, so too the remaining magi and soldiers.
“So you are banished,” Sonnen growled. “Banished for life and in memory.” His voice boomed. “Be gone from this place. And good riddance.”
The glyph expanded and brightened with ferocity, until Danil was forced to clench his eyes from being blinded. The air seemed to contract, then with the sound of a distant bell, the light extinguished.
Blinking rapidly, Danil looked about the cavern. A few shifters stood about, scrubbing their eyes.
Hafryn met his gaze and smiled.
Brianna, her magi and soldiers were gone.
28
They emerged from the tunnel after dawn. Danil stared about the deadlands, blinking at the brightness. He didn’t think they’d been in the cavern for so long.
“Time moves differently in sacred spaces,” Sonnen said.
Danil hadn’t realized it was sacred, and said as much.
The lines about the dragon’s eyes tightened. “It will be,” he promised, having already charged two shifters with the unenviable task of carrying Ronan’s body from the cavern. “Over the next few weeks, we’ll remove the monuments Kaul made for himself. Though I expect with time the well itself will dissipate as the leylines find new routes across the land.”
The leylines hummed in affirmation. Danil could sense them already seeking paths through crevices and tunnels and mineshafts.
Danil almost smiled. “Let’s keep things comfortable in the meantime.”
Sonnen rumbled in agreement.
The dragon sent a force ahead to Farin to ferret out any last remaining Roldaerian magi and soldiers. The shifters returned hours later with news that the village sat abandoned, with signs of a hasty retreat.
With a respectful nod at Danil, the leader added that a few had remained behind to fill the pit and afford the slain villagers burial rites befitting honored folk.
Throat closing over, Danil thanked the leader.
Hafryn touched his elbow. “When you’re ready to pay your respects, Danil, I’d like accompany you.”
The leylines murmured their approval.
By lunchtime, Danil found himself under a makeshift awning in a wide deadland gully as tents and cooking stations were erected all around him. Curious onlookers crowded around the awning
as Elania tended to his smattering of scrapes and bruises. He did his best to ignore the curious looks, dismayed to be under the regard of so many.
“You’re somewhat notorious now,” Hafryn pointed out from where he perched on a stool, having had all his own wounds healed by the leylines when they shook off Magus Brianna’s dark magic. Danil appeared to be the only one still sporting injuries from the encounter.
“To keep you grounded,” Elania said with a dimpled grin.
Danil flinched as she swabbed a gash on his forearm. The snow leopard didn’t even bother with her ever-present paintbrush to augment her ministrations.
The leylines thrummed underfoot and cheerily ignored his consternation.
Elania seemed to share their sentiments. “Just because you can wave your hand around and have leylines clamor to your will does not mean you get special treatment,” she said, her amber eyes betraying her amusement. “Now, quit fidgeting!”
“The gentle treatments of a warrior-healer is an acquired taste, Danil,” Blutark chortled.
Elania threw the bear a glare with such venom that Blutark transformed into his Trueform. He ducked behind a grinning Hafryn, breath chuffing in what could only be humor.
The surrounding shifters laughed.
It got Danil thinking, though. “Say, why didn’t any of you shift in the cavern?” A raging dragon or two would have been rather helpful.
Sonnen leaned against a bench a few feet away, watching the proceedings with a faint smile. “Believe me, it wasn’t to test your mettle,” he said, to a round of chuckles. The dragon sobered and folded his arms. “As a halfbreed, Kaul hated every aspect that made him Amasian. In a temple he built in his own honor, it stands to reason that there would be magicks to deny all shifters the right to transform.”
Danil sighed, shaking his head. “I had no idea there was a temple right under the deadlands. No one in Farin did.”
“We might have taken a misstep there, too,” Hafryn admitted with a wry grin. “Kaul’s bent was to force kiandrite to his will. We assumed we would find a crystal made from power stolen from leylines.”
“And that it could be spirited out of the temple long before the magi arrived,” Blutark added.