“By the Gods of Isthalos,” Xian swore, moving quickly around Dwynwyn and her guards. “What now?”
He had not taken three steps before the doors to the hall burst open.
“To arms!” Sargo cried. “To arms!”
The Kyree in the rotunda fluttered instinctively into the dome, drawing their weapons noisily.
Xian laid his hand on the hilt of his own sword. “Sargo! Report!”
“An army, Master Xian!” Sargo was having trouble catching his breath, whether from exertion or excitement, Dwynwyn could not tell. “Faeries, but different. They are all shadows and gray, Master, and terrible in their aspect. They are at the walls even now!”
“How is that? Why were we not warned of their approach?” Xian shouted angrily. “I ordered watches posted over all the lands north and west!”
“They are not coming from the land, Master,” Sargo said, his eyes wide. “They are marching out of the sea!”
Galen turned to the others. “Get out of here, all of you!”
“Where can we go?” Rhea wailed.
Vasska bounded in their direction.
“Watch out!” Galen yelled.
The front left claw shattered the ground underneath them. The group scattered frantically out of the way, leaping in any direction that might afford some safety. Satinka circled around, closing in as well. Galen found himself in a forest of gigantic scale-shrouded dragon legs that were pounding the earth around him. Between the dust they raised and the smoke from the grass fires, his vision was obscured and he lost track of his companions. He tried to break for the east ridge of the hill, only to face the raking curve of a dragon’s tail. He tried south, then west, but the thunderous stomping of the dragons’ legs made his gait unsteady as the earth itself rebounded from their footfalls.
He lost his footing and dropped to the ground on his back. He looked up past the shoulder that hung twenty feet above his head and saw the empty pouch just behind the spiked ridge of the dragon’s crest. It was Satinka. She turned her gaze at once on Galen, her lips curling back.
He struggled to get his feet under him, as Satinka raised her foreleg, her talons quickly flexing over him, then plunging downward.
Suddenly, Galen was struck from the side, bowled out of harm’s way. Dazed, he turned looking for a place to run . . .
Rhea lay facedown nearby, one of Satinka’s talons thrust down through her side, pinning her to the ground.
“No!” Galen screamed.
The dragon turned her malevolent gaze toward him once more.
Bolts of blue fire suddenly exploded against Satinka’s jaw. She turned toward them in rage.
“Get away from her, you damn bitch!” Maddoc yelled, as blue flame burned about the blade of his sword. “Your time is done, you just don’t know it yet! This is where it starts! This is where it ends!”
Satinka leaped up into the air, drawing her sharp, bloody talon out of Rhea’s side. She screeched at Maddoc, outraged at the insult of this magic fire, then dropped back to earth on the other side of him, her head recoiling and her fangs bare.
Galen stumbled quickly back to where Rhea lay, falling next to her. She was still alive, her arms struggling to lift herself up, but she managed only to turn over on her back. She seemed unable to move her legs.
Galen took her head in his hands, trying to support it. Tears flowed down his cheeks. “Oh, Rhea! Why did you do it? Why?”
She looked up into his eyes, a thin trickle of blood running from the corner of her mouth as she smiled. “Dahlia,” she said carefully. “Promise me you’ll find her. Promise me you’ll tell her about us . . .”
“Quiet! Just rest here and we’ll . . . we’ll figure something out!” Galen pleaded as he gently set her head back into the grass.
“My daughter! You’ve got to take care of our daughter!” Rhea moaned, clutching at Galen.
“Yes! Of course.” He glanced frantically around for help.
Maddoc was raising his sword, facing down Satinka.
“Maddoc! Come here!” Galen yelled. He drew his own sword, searching within himself for the magic to save his friend. It had failed him before, but he had to try again. He found it. The mystery was there; it was only an elusive and feeble light somewhere within, but it was there just the same. “Maddoc, come to me! We’ll face it together!”
“Dragon-slaying?” S’schickt said with pride. “You are ambitious, Galen!”
Galen fumbled with his sword, then presented the hilt. He could see that other place in the back of his mind where the magic came from. The winged woman was there once more . . . a shadow and vague but there nevertheless. He pictured the ironwork he had made for her protection. She was offering it back to him in return for something.
“Maddoc!” Galen yelled frantically. “Come quickly! Rhea needs you!”
Galen saw Maddoc turn. The scholar’s gaze fixed on his wife lying on the ground. He started to run toward Galen.
Two front claws suddenly straddled Galen. Vasska! Galen looked up past the twenty-foot-high massive shoulders of the beast. High Priestess Edana, still holding fast in the pouch, was yelling to Vasska just behind his head. She looked down at Galen below, every line of her face conveying hatred as she held to the single remaining strap.
Galen turned back to Maddoc. The scholar ran madly toward them. “Rhea! My beloved! I am coming!”
Satinka lowered her head behind him, her maw gaping open!
Galen opened his mouth to yell, but there was no time.
The conflagration boiled out over Satinka’s jaws, rushing with hurricane force toward them. It enveloped Maddoc in moments, engulfing him completely in a deadly inferno.
Galen clutched at the hilt of his sword, tears of rage flowing down his face. The magic reacted as he felt it would, the great sphere forming a shield around him.
The furnace fires of Satinka blasted into the mystic sphere . . . and emerged again bent at an angle sharply upward.
Vasska was prepared for Satinka’s blast. He had lifted his well-plated chest to protect himself against her breath. The deflected fires, however, were unexpected. They towered up past his shoulder, burning at his wing sockets and curling down his tender back. They would not do much damage, but they startled him.
Edana, too, was caught unprepared. The flames roared about her, burning her hand. She cried out in pain, loosening her grip.
Vasska lurched upward at just that moment.
Edana tumbled down the shoulder of the dragon, its horned ridges slowing her descent. She plunged toward the sustained flames of Satinka’s fiery breath, catching a glimpse of Galen below her, kneeling safely within his protected space. She fell toward it, hoping for a moment that it might offer her some refuge as well.
She fell against the sphere . . .
. . . and it reflected her back outward!
Edana rolled behind the hind legs of Vasska, embroiled in the flames. She dragged herself behind his hind claw by her arms, desperate to escape the agony of the blistering phosphorous fires raging around her, searing her flesh.
There Edana stopped, ablaze in the fires of the Dragonkings.
48
Enmity’s Fool
They walked out of the sea. First came eighteen tall faery warriors unlike any truth known to the Seven Lords. They were smoke gray with turquoise-tinged foam running through their skin, and their gray wings were mottled in black. Their eyes gleamed like black pearls. Each of them wore gray armor and held a long curving blade in their powerful hands. They were slightly taller and a good deal wider than most faeries, their arm, wing, and leg muscles bulging with strength. Stepping from the rocks at the base of the tower at Kien Werren, the white foam of the waves breaking around them, they stretched open their wings, then flew as one up the face of the cliff behind the tower. They then broke into two groups of nine to either side of the tower, landed atop the cliffs, and turned to face the sea. With their arms raised above them, they called in deep voices out over the waters.
> With the breaking of the next wave against the base of the cliff, their call was answered. Another rank of their brothers emerged from the sea. These were lesser creatures: a lighter gray with gray eyes, and sized as other faeries. Their features were each unique, for they were patterned after faeries who had once been taken by the sea. Some were sailors and some were merchants, and many of them had been lost not so long ago. Their bodies had been cast from these same battlements but days before.
Each successive wave crashed against the shore and brought with it another rank of the gray warriors.
The sea was giving back its faery dead.
Xian drew his sword as the shadow faeries stormed the rotunda. He barked his orders to the Kyree in the hall. “Form up! Keep them at the door and we’ll take them as they come!”
The Kyree’s wings rumbled in the air as they tried to form a pocket around the doors into the rotunda. If they could contain the onslaught—confine it to a single narrow entrance—Xian knew they had a good chance of holding here until they could either beat back the assault or just bleed them through attrition.
The large gray warriors led the charge, and Xian was startled at the sight of their shining black eyes. What I could do with such warriors! he thought as his wings beat against the air furiously. He raised his sword as the first of them rushed toward him.
Their swords met with a tremendous ringing. The gray warrior’s blow was so strong that it pushed Xian backward in the air. Xian pressed back, however, raining a quick series of blows against his opponent. The gray warrior met each with quick defense. Xian gained a little headway, pressing his foe backward slightly, but was frustrated in his attempts to land any blow, let alone a telling one.
The Kyree master dodged a sudden lunge, spinning in midair. He reversed and swung his blade in a sideways arc toward the gray warrior’s exposed neck with all the strength he could muster.
The blade passed cleanly through, severing the gray warrior’s head. It fell to the ground below, rolling to a stop near the feet of Dwynwyn and the astonished guards who still held her there.
Xian smiled as he looked on the body that still hovered before him. The cut was flecked with turquoise foam. It was his first clean kill of the day.
The headless warrior surprised him. It dodged once in the air, and then swung again.
Xian barely managed to block the blow. The decapitated warrior pressed the attack forward with renewed fury, and Xian was forced once more to give ground. He suddenly backed against one of his own warriors just as his opponent—still stubbornly alive—feinted to the right and then slashed to his left.
Xian did not feel the blow itself but instantly experienced its effects. The wingtip on his left side was severed, causing him to fall suddenly into a spin. He flapped frantically, barely managing to right himself before he smashed into the floor of the rotunda.
The headless guard settled down on the floor nearby.
Xian scrambled to his feet, backing away from the gray horror that stalked him. In doing so, he passed Dwynwyn and her guards. The guards, finally coming to their senses, drew their weapons, releasing the Seeker to her own fate. They closed ranks before their commander, backing up with him.
The headless warrior stalked them as far as Dwynwyn, then paused. It reached down with its free hand, snatched its head from the ground, and placed it once more on its shoulders. Bluish foam seemed to ripple around the wound as it healed.
“By the Gods!” Xian exclaimed, his eyes wide.
The gray warrior turned its eyes once more on Xian and strode forward. The first of Xian’s guards swung but the warrior arrested the blow with its free hand. Xian heard the guard’s wrist snap as the warrior casually tossed the smaller Kyree aside. A second guard lunged with his blade, but the warrior blocked the blow and countered with his own thrust. Xian saw the blood on the blade as it emerged from the guard’s back.
“Yield, Xian!”
It was Dwynwyn’s voice.
Xian backed against the heavy table, causing the parchment maps to spill to the floor. The gray warrior reached forward for Xian’s throat, its weapon arm pulling the sword blade back for a final, telling blow.
“I said yield!” Dwynwyn yelled.
Xian bent backward over the table. The gray warrior held him with an iron grip.
“I yield!” Xian shouted.
The gray warrior froze with his blade at Xian’s throat.
“Stand down!” Xian called into the room. “We yield!”
A silence descended on the rotunda. Only Dwynwyn’s footsteps cut through the sudden quiet in the vast room.
Xian glanced over at Dwynwyn as she approached. The gray warrior still held him awkwardly over the table.
“I see you have found a new truth, Seeker!” Xian exclaimed.
“Yes,” Dwynwyn answered, “as you are about to find a new truth, Master Xian.”
Xian struggled uncomfortably under the gray warrior’s iron grip. It continued to stare at him from its shining black eyes. “I don’t suppose you would care to enlighten me, would you? I would be delighted to hear it!”
“I would be delighted to tell you,” Dwynwyn said evenly. “Lord Phaeon will not be taking Qestardis, either by force of arms or by marriage. It appears that Queen Tatyana will have a larger force at arms than Lord Phaeon had previously supposed.”
Xian nodded as best he could. “You’re saying that I have bet on the wrong unicorn.”
Dwynwyn puzzled over the phrase for a moment. “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.”
“It means that I would very much appreciate the opportunity to extend my heartfelt apologies to your queen for any misunderstanding that may have existed between us,” Xian said quickly. “And offer to withdraw from her lands under terms of a truce.”
“And?” Dwynwyn prompted.
“And . . . and as a token of my good faith, I will release you . . .”
“And the princess . . .” Dwynwyn coaxed.
“And the princess Aislynn at once.”
“Yes.” Dwynwyn smiled. “I see that you have found a new truth.”
Vasska lunged toward Satinka, but the female dragon managed to pull herself into the air. Vasska was not about to let her go so easily. He, too, pressed himself into the air in pursuit, his torn wing shivering with the effort.
Tragget observed none of this. He had seen Edana tumble from Vasska’s pouch and had watched in horror as the flames enveloped her. He ran across the scarred hilltop, screaming her name into the smoking, charred grasses.
He reached the mystic sphere.
Galen still knelt there, gripping his sword with the hilt turned upward and his eyes tightly shut.
There was something else there, too. He did not recognize it at first, it was so deformed. The hair was gone from its head, its legs were shriveled, and what remained of its clothing still smoldered. Yet as he gazed at it, the form resolved itself in his mind into an image that would haunt him forever.
Tragget fell to his knees next to his mother.
She had been everything to him . . . his entire world before the magic had tempted him away from her. She was his life. She was his center. She sustained him.
She was his heart!
A guttural scream of agony rose in Tragget’s throat. It was punctuated with a wrenching sob and words that were barely coherent, but some of them Galen understood.
“Mother! Oh, Mother . . . no!”
She moved.
Tragget did not know which was more horrifying, that he had thought her dead, or that she still lived in this condition. Her head twisted slowly toward him, her blistered, distorted lips parting as she spoke in slow, rasping tones. “Tragget . . . my son! Is it you?”
The mystic sphere shattered, its pieces vanishing. In that moment, the bent remains of Edana straightened on the ground. Galen stared in disbelief for a few moments, the horror of what had happened to them overwhelming him. “Oh, Tragget! There was nothing I could do . . . nothing any of us could do.
”
Tragget looked up at Galen. He has taken on more than he knows, he thought. The magic is bigger than he is . . . stronger than he is . . .
“See? The figure wears robes that are too large for him.”
Tragget choked back a sob, then laughed sadly. “Am I the fool?”
Galen shook his head quizzically, not comprehending what Tragget was asking. “No, Tragget . . . you’re no fool!”
Tragget was looking at Galen, but his mind saw only the visions of the dragonsmoke. It reached out with its hand, plunging it into the chest of the fool, tearing out the fool’s heart.
Tragget gazed down at his mother. She had looked at the dreamsmoke with a mother’s eyes. She had seen two men. She had seen the man Galen would be and had mistaken him for the man she wanted her son to be.
“We don’t have much time. Please, come with us,” Galen said, offering his hand once more. “We’ll figure out what to do next. We’ll find a life for us both.”
“Tragget!” his mother croaked.
Tragget looked down at her. He reached out with his hand for her reddened, peeling hand, not daring to touch it. He could not look at her as he spoke. “I’m here, Mother.”
“Help me. Don’t leave me!”
Tragget’s gaze cast about the broken hilltop. Rhea Myyrdin lay dead at Galen’s feet, her arm stretched out over her head as she reached for the blackened corpse of her beloved husband. Beyond them, the rest of Galen’s Circle awaited him. The dwarf looked anxious to leave.
Farther still, down the hill, the battle that had begun so long ago continued. Panas had already begun to feed on the carnage. Satinka and Vasska continued to threaten each other but were not willing to allow Panas all the spoils of the war. They, too, had begun feeding on their own armies, and no longer felt obliged to eat only the dead.
He had hoped to stop it. He had hoped to put an end to the senseless war with its senseless deaths. He had hoped to end the tyranny of the Dragonkings. He had seen it in the dragonsmoke . . . a great and noble destiny.
“Come with us,” Galen pleaded. “There’s nothing more you can do for her.”
Mystic Warrior Page 40