In Siege of Daylight

by Gregory S Close

  Vaujn stood transfixed and stunned for only a moment. Planning for an engagement required deep reflection, examination and consideration. Surviving an engagement required instinct and reflexes. And certainly a ravaging band of aulden attacking from a rift in the Veil had not been a part of his careful planning, so instinct and reflex would have to do.

  “Sturhntihr!” he yelled, and the Prince’s Guard formed up into the defensive rockfisher formation, their shields a kinsteel barrier around the prince.

  “It’s wonderful!” Hiruld sighed, motionless and transfixed by the approaching lights.

  Vaujn punched him in the testicles, and the wonder rushed out of Hiruld’s face with a groan as he doubled over.

  “Get down, My Prince,” Vaujn commanded. “And stay down. We need to get off this pavilion and outta this tree, or we’re buggered sideways.”

  “This,” gasped the prince, “this is the shadowyn?”

  Vaujn pulled the lever on his crossbow, and with a click the string was drawn and the first bolt ready to fire. Three more bolts waited in the spring-loaded mechanism common to kin design, giving the relatively small squad a much-needed advantage.

  “No,” grunted the captain. This may be worse. “It’s aulden and high magic.”

  Vaujn trained the weapon on the shimmering wave closing in on them, marching backward in unison with his squad. He held the left flank of the formation, where he could keep an eye on Hiruld and the approaching enemy.

  “Aulden? Why would they…? Wait – what about my father?” Color crept back into Hiruld’s face, and he lifted his head to peer out over the shield wall. “What of my father? Aeolil?”

  Vaujn kicked Hiruld in the shin, and the prince’s head snapped back immediately. “Stay down, you idiot! Your father and the rest will have to find their own way. You’re supposed to save the damn world, remember?”

  The ripples of iiyir from the bridge through the Veil were fading, as were the prismatic effects, but some of the aulden still walked on the other side, or blinked back and forth. Humans were dropping in bloody heaps everywhere. They were surprised, glamoured and overwhelmed, besides being largely unequipped to fight their ethereal foe.

  Vaujn could make out a half-dozen aulden in the first wave that flowed toward them. The leader wielded a wohrbrund, a sooth-sword, so he marked her as High Blade. The black night of her eyes pierced through the ambient translucent hues, and Vaujn gritted his teeth.

  We can’t engage, he told himself, trying to dissolve any leftover bits of their former strategy into a useful tactic for retreat. But he was certain they’d be overtaken before reaching the relative safety of the exit to the under levels.

  “Chloe,” he yelled, “Scmohg, scmohg!”

  He exchanged a gilded glance with his wife, catching just the hint of her eyes through her lowered visor. She nodded acknowledgment and muttered a charm under her breath as she tossed a handful of round stones from the pouch at her belt. They scattered and exploded into an obscuring wall of smoke to cover their retreat. As the cloud thickened, Vaujn barked out another command, and the formation moved right two steps at double time, angling for the same exit but from a different approach. This was a standard maneuver, but Vaujn was assuming that the aulden hadn’t seen any kin tricks for at least as long as he he’d seen any of theirs.

  Vaujn allowed himself no relief as the rear of the formation crossed the threshold into shelter. The aulden would not be stalled long by a wall of smoke, enchanted or not. They had already gained more time than he’d anticipated.

  “‘Ware!” Chloe screamed in rare panic.

  The High Blade slipped in from the Veil, and Vaujn pivoted to face her down. Her sword sang through the air as it knocked away his well-aimed bolt, but she stepped back instead of pressing the attack.

  “Mishtigge,” she whispered. “I have bought you time. Get to bedrock. I will sing the way shut behind you.”

  Vaujn watched the glow of the wohrbrund confirm the honesty of her words and wasted no time questioning fortune. The High Blade sang a short, simple tune. It seemed awkward on her lips, but the branches of the ilyela responded, creaking stiff and slow to reach in and block the opening of the door in a tangled web of reawakened leaf and limbs.

  Behind the aulden, Chloe’s smoke was beginning to dissipate, and Vaujn could make out the forms of the High Blade’s fallen sisters sprawled motionless on the ground.

  By her own hand.

  Vaujn tried to imagine a circumstance that could pit him against his own squad, and his stomach turned at the very thought.

  “Miiyeal,” he said, thinking it fitting to say his thanks in her own tongue.

  The dark look in her eyes did nothing to hide the conflict in her thoughts, but she accepted his gesture with the traditional response before slipping back through the Veil. “Aiea Lii.”

  Vaujn didn’t tarry. He turned his attention back to his own. “Down deep and down fast,” he said. “Let’s put some rock between us and them.”

  Hurtling headfirst toward the ground, Aeolil extended her arms to break the fall and hoped the impact wouldn’t snap her neck. She knew of a slowing spell, but couldn’t recall it. She’d spent too much of her studies crafting fire and lightning, hoping to harness the deeper ways of power, often at the expense of more basic spellcraft. She’d wanted to avoid helplessness at all costs.

  A few feet short of thus meeting such an ironic end, Aeolil was both puzzled and relieved that her descent slowed. The air around her thickened, like water, and buoyed her to a moderate tumble by the time her palms hit hard earth. She rolled, which was an awkward maneuver in her formal dress, but at least she had worn her least encumbering gown in the event of any trouble.

  Two black boots settled with a soft step by her head.

  “Call up your wards!” Brohan urged her, standing over her with sword drawn and glowing with cool light. “These are aulden – Ceearmyltu. They are here in numbers.”

  Aulden?

  This revelation confused Aeolil as much as it relieved her that Brohan had not just tried to throw her to her death a few moments ago. Sources of iiyir bristled through the filaments, streams of power from a hundred nodes fading and growing and fading again.

  Aeolil called up her strongest ward, drawing deep on the world tides, tainted though they were, to shore up her defense. As the ur’iiyir entered her, a new tapestry of patterns, colors and lights enveloped the world, overwhelming her senses with vision that transcended physical sight.

  The haze of the rainbow bridge and the aulden glamour burned away like fog under the rays of morning suns-rise. The light of iiyir itself seemed to illuminate the world, a fire like the suns where the high magic opened the Veil; and lesser fires where each aulden tread, trailing sparks behind like orphaned motes from a beacon fire.

  Beside her, Brohan was illuminated from within in blue-white radiance, his skin a translucent shell, his eyes alight like white-hot coals, his sword aglow in an opalescent sheen. Above her, from the royal pavilion, a star of red and orange pulsed like a heartbeat and near blinded her, matched only by a star of yellow fire across the field in the Mneyr pavilion and some lesser emanations of varying hues from the pavilion of Mother Church.

  In a blink, the sensitivity dimmed, and the more familiar bounds of reality returned with but a hint of her brief glimpse into the shining world of Veil and Tide.

  “Stay with me,” Brohan directed. “We must sever the Way from its source.”

  “But Hiruld-”

  “That’s for Vaujn to deal with. Agrylon and Rel will be distraction enough for a time, but this is left for us.”

  Aeolil shadowed Brohan’s footsteps as he danced lithely through the melee. The master bard engaged but little in combat, turning blades aside and slipping between foes rather than challenging them outright. The aulden, for their part, seemed to share his reluctance, and Aeolil enjoyed a convenience of proximity.

  “There.” Brohan pointed to an indistinct bit of shimmer near the center of
the list. “That’s the way-gate.”

  Aeolil drew her dagger. She’d laid an enchantment on the blade, expecting a shadowyn, but she supposed it would suffice to penetrate aulden defenses just as well. She ran her fingers down the blade to wake the fire in the steel with a word. The iiyir was sluggish at her call, but it flowed through her and into the metal, a faint glow spreading to the edges.

  Brohan led her, one step ahead of chaos, through the melee. The bodies and activity thinned as they neared the center of the list, where a headless corpse marked the epicenter of the aulden gate spell. The battle had spread out from here and remained on the perimeter.

  The eye of the storm, she thought.

  A gleaming sword streaked out of nowhere at her neck, but Brohan’s own sword knocked the blow aside. Aeolil finally recognized the sword that saved her life, like a brand of captive moonfire, and could not quite restrain a cry of surprise.

  “Elèndere!”

  Brohan and the aulden both shifted into guard stance, neither making any further move to attack. “Seemed a shame to waste a magic sword,” the bard said, never looking away from the aulden sentry. “I left twice as many as I took.”

  The aulden said something beautiful, her brilliant indigo eyes like pinpoints of fire under her helm, darting back and forth between them.

  Brohan shook his head, “I do not want to kill you, sister. The Ceearmyltu are not my enemy, and I am certainly not yours.”

  Aeolil looked around at the fighting that enveloped the pavilions and the stands. There was fire and blood aplenty consuming Saint Kaissus Field, and she could feel through the thread of iiyir that still connected her to Agrylon that though he still lived, he and Rel must be sorely taxed.

  “There will be no more killing,” Brohan assured, his voice sincere, soothing. “I will send you back through the Way. Back home. Just stand aside.”

  The aulden shook her head, but her sword lowered, just slightly.

  “Don’t break the long peace,” Brohan pleaded. “You must not mar the honor of your tribe with this treachery.”

  She raised her sword again, and spat a stream of angry words at him. Beautiful, seductive, angry words. Aeolil dropped to her knees, feigning fatigue, and whispered a spell under her breath as they argued.

  “Yes,” Brohan persisted, his voice earnest. “But their deceit does not justify yours.”

  Aeolil imbued the newly summoned energy of the spell into her still smoldering dagger, and it came to life, pulling against her hands as Swiftwing might pull on his hawking tether. She gritted her teeth and held it still, adjusting her aim with a careful eye.

  The aulden’s lips moved to speak, but Aeolil did not wait for her words. She found her aim and released the dagger. It launched from her hands like the bolt from a crossbow, the glowing metal painting a white-hot afterimage in the air as it struck the aulden under the chin of her helm and into the delicate flesh beneath.

  The aulden lurched backward, her sword flying. She threw her helm away, spinning to the ground, limbs flailing as she clutched at her opened neck and the burning metal lodged in her head. The sound of her screams drowned in the blood filling her throat, leaving only a sputtering, humming gurgle. She didn’t stop struggling until the flames inside her skull melted her beautiful eyes and burned hungrily through the empty sockets.

  Aeolil shook.

  “She would have listened!” Brohan screamed, his voice both plaintive and angry.

  It sounded like he was yelling at her from a distant tower. The look on his face was almost as hard to confront as the spectacle of the smoking corpse. Anger. Disappointment.

  Betrayal.

  “No time,” she said, swallowing her emotions down deep, and the sad whisper of her first words fell away into a strength of certainty as she continued. “There was no time, Brohan. We survive. We survive, first.”

  Brohan nodded, but his expression did not soften. “Keep your wards strong. They may be back before I can break this gateway, even with Elèndere as a source.” He paused, his eyes sad or admonishing, or both. “The next aulden we meet will not let her guard down.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

  DANGEROUS WAYS

  JYLKIR clung to the branch of the ylohim, her cheek pressed against the smooth bark, watching Bloodhawk pick his way through the trees below her. He slipped through the Macc lines at a brisk pace, but slowed to a more careful, measured step once among her sisters. Du’uwneyyl and the Blades had entered the Way first, followed closely by Ililysiun and the first wave of the attack. The lyaeyni and the elder caylaeni stood at the entrance to the shining portal through the Veil, eyes open but unseeing the mortal world as they channeled and controlled the spell, locked together in communion. Ryaleyr and her cadre of warriors waited just within the threshold of the way-gate, impatient for the humans to cross through.

  He’s doomed, of course.

  Jylkir did not doubt Bloodhawk’s skill, or that he could overcome at least a few of her sisters before succumbing to their numbers, but he would not escape alive. However, with any luck at all, he could at least achieve the most important goal of their hasty plan by disrupting the spell and perhaps even destroying the codex.

  But it will trap them, she thought, her eyes dry only because she had already emptied her tears. They will be left to the mercies of the humans.

  Bloodhawk was very close now, his long knife at the ready. Jylkir could only make out his silhouette as he closed the remaining distance to his prey. She did not envy him the task of slaying a lyaeyni, striking her down unawares like an assassin. Bloodhawk deserved better than to be remembered as a common murderer.

  Jylkir waited, but the wilhorwhyr had paused as Prince Ruoughn and Lombarde passed near. Perhaps he can deal with one or both of them as well, she hoped. Disquiet followed in the ambassador’s wake, each quiet step a wound in the life around him. Her subtle unease at his presence was now an undeniable revulsion. The Maccs approached the rainbow bridge, singing out a boisterous battle hymn, and the Ceearmyltu readied themselves at the gateway. Bloodhawk coiled at the edge of his cover, ready to spring at his prey in the small clearing where the Way was opened. Jylkir saw his fingers tense about the hilt, and then…

  Meimniyl’s head sailed from her shoulders, the suns-light catching a glint of guilty steel amidst the fountain of her lifeblood. Her body stood motionless for a moment, arms upraised over the codex, before falling over its gilded pages. Jylkir blinked, disbelief and confusion mingling in her gut.

  Bloodhawk hadn’t moved.

  Lombarde’s curved blade returned for another stroke, opening Niealihu across the back of her shoulders as her eyes opened in alarm. Ruoghen strode hard into the fray. His bastard sword took Eleulii as she stirred from trance, and two of his skull-bearers butchered Hlemyrae before she could even draw steel. Feylobhar, her reflexes still sharp despite her age, had just enough warning to slide between their swords. The humans’ blades whistled through empty air, but her own songwood knives slid silent from their scabbards and felled her would-be assassins in a blur.

  The main force of the Maccs plowed into the rear of the Ceearmyltu formation. Those that did not die at the invisible doorstep of the way-gate were forced through and into the Veil. Ryaleyr’s call to arms was cut off as the magical portal collapsed in a rush of air and a clap of thunder, leaving her and her host adrift in the shifting lights of Faerie.

  Feylobhar screamed into the sudden stillness, and Jylkir could feel the elder’s rage rushing through the Grove, spreading through root and limb, calling on the heart of the forest itself for aid. Aside from a rustling of leaves, the spirit of the woods gave no response. Even the ylohim were sluggish to the call. Jylkir could feel the blood thirst, but the ward trees did not, or could not, act.

  Jylkir watched Feylobhar battling below her, faster and stronger than any human, but too old and slow and tired to last for long against such numbers. She could not see or feel Bloodhawk’s presence. Her lips brushed the bark of the tree limb as she m
outhed the Song of the First Tree tunelessly under her breath, hoping at least to help Feylobhar wake the spirits.

  The irony of the Macc’s betrayal wasn’t lost on Jylkir. They had done what she and Bloodhawk had planned to do. Kill the lyaeyni. Close the gate. Trap her sisters somewhere in the mystic vortices of the Veil or within the walls of Dwynleigsh. The Macc strategy, in hindsight, seemed obvious. All of the warfaring aulden were dead or gone. Those left were what Du’uwneyyl called the tenders and menders.

  Like me, she thought.

  The Grove, and the Caerwood, was theirs for the taking.

  Feylobhar had slain three more before the first Macc sword found its mark, cutting her from shoulder to hip. She stumbled, and another sword stabbed into her back. She killed another before they backed off, letting her bleed. She spat at them.

  Where is Bloodhawk? she wondered, both anxious and hopeful. She looked with eyes both open and closed, but could find him with neither sight nor senses.

  Two more swords cut into Feylobhar, one slicing open her thigh, the other stabbing deep into her chest. The latter swordsman fell back screaming, leaving his sword – and his sword hand – in the elder caylaeni’s breast. She laughed, wild and mocking, choking back the blood welling in her throat.

  “You,” Feylobhar said in the old Macc tongue, pointing at Ruoughn. Blood painted her lips with every word. “You’re… no… worthy… prince.”

  “Hah!” scoffed Ruoughn, pushing his way into the circle of men. He kept a length and a half of his bastard sword between him and Feylobhar, for all his thin bravado. “I will take your head back to my hall, and I will drink the first toast of my coronation from your gilded skull: to the last of the Ceearmyltu.” The prince took one more careful step closer, flushed and grinning. “As for your other parts, I can guarantee no such honor.”

  Jylkir saw a shadow shifting in the clearing, moving from corpse to corpse, silent as the dead. Bloodhawk! A slim hope blossomed in her then, and she tried again to join with the world tides and wake the slumbering Caerwood. The faint tickle of root and limb prickled under her skin, and the Grove called out to her, its voice far away but growing stronger.