Springwar

by Tom Deitz

  He looked up, then down, then up again, not believing.

  A man stood atop the escarpment, legs braced wide, arms outstretched, cut out against the heavens.

  A man bearing stolen weapons, and wearing stolen armor. And even as Avall watched, that man raised his sword, then brought it down again.

  And with it brought the lightning.

  “Eight!” Strynn breathed beside him.

  Avall fumbled for her hand, but dared not stop watching as the figure once more raised the sword. But this time he did not lower it, this time he flung himself flat on his back atop the cliff face and pointed the sword at the sky.

  The wind changed directions, as if confused. Clouds rode in with it to ring the sky in darkness. And then came lightning indeed.

  Something reached out and slammed into Avall’s mind like a gust of dire wind—save that it struck his thoughts, not his body. He reeled, fought for consciousness as impossible powers flicked out at him. Gem power, he realized, as he fought to retain control of his thoughts in the face of emotions assailing him from everywhere.

  Nonhuman ones. Blood and kill and revenge.

  And with them, one that was human—or had been. One who drank the power of the gems, and—as best he could tell—likewise drank the power of earth and sky themselves.

  “Avall …” Merryn began.

  He opened his eyes, not knowing when he’d closed them—and wished he hadn’t, for that skewed time sense was haunting him, though he no longer held his gem. And with that, he felt the earth beneath him, though it was not his flesh that touched it. And he felt the sky respond, as something that lay between continued to call down lightning into Ixti’s army. Over and over. Endlessly, carving the world into quick-flashed images of black and white.

  Which was impossible.

  Avall swallowed hard, fumbling for his gem—for anything with which to regain some sense of focus.

  It burned him, yet at the same time it sent a pulse of recognition flashing through him with so much force he fell. And stayed where he was: crouched in the angle between the parapet’s western and southern walls.

  He closed his eyes to shut out one set of impressions, for he was seeing with more eyes than his own. Something had got hold of him, like being too near a fire and being swept up in it, or a piece of metal too near a bell, chiming in sympathy. Desperate, he tried to find himself, reached out and took Strynn’s hand, and forced a bond with her through the gems they both were wearing.

  She resisted at first, evidently under as much assault as he, then dared to welcome him. Clarity returned, but not that feeling of being more than one person more than one place, with geens’ thoughts gibbering around his mind, the same way their cries gibbered in his ears.

  Nor did it help that the earth likewise spoke there. And the heavens. And maybe, it seemed, the one who commanded them.

  Even without looking, he saw the man on the cliff.

  The lightning warrior.

  Saw him raise the sword again, and call down more lightning, and send it marching through Ixti’s ranks, burning men where they stood, or slamming them to the earth with flaming weapons.

  More lightning, and stronger, and the air was hot with the stuff, as bolts stabbed down like arrows. And then it was more like a dance, for a series of bolts hit raised spears and arched between them, leaping from spear to sword to helmet in an ever-widening reel of heavenly fire.

  Never mind the geens that, half-mad with fear and rage, and ecstatic with bloodlust and unholy glee, still cut their own swath through Ixti’s levies.

  There was no rain, save one of blood—from fangs and claws and talons.

  And one of fire from the heavens.

  Yet all the while arrows flew—and spears—and crossbow bolts. But one could not shoot a storm. Nor could anyone target the nameless figure sprawled atop the ridge, because no one on the ground could see him. Yet still the lightning danced, in a widening sweep centered on the escarpment, but never once hitting inside Gynn’s citadel.

  Ixti was turning, too. They had no choice. No one could stand against the wind and the earth and the sky. A few threw down their weapons and ran for Eron’s walls, crying out “surrender,” demanding that ladders be lowered. A few responded. A few climbed. One was knocked away in transit by a bolt that scoured the battlements.

  The black mass was moving, though—in utter rout.

  And the soldiers farther down had noticed it, too, as the lightning storm moved onward, bearing down on the gate.

  Merryn grabbed Avall to haul him up. He rose groggily. Reality spun, as he sought to see through two sets of eyes, even as he tried vainly to wrench his mind away from whatever had captured it.

  Not a geen. Or more than a geen. Or something human that had briefly controlled the geens, until it had answered the stronger call of the land.

  No! There was too much chaos, too much jumble, too much that made no sense in his head.

  Elvix, at least, was running—jogging as fast as she could along the wall-walk, following the geen’s track through Barrax’s shattering army, while the Eronese archers finally got sense enough to pepper men who’d forgotten they were there with arrows like a hailstorm of black-shafted pain. The dead lay everywhere. And the dying. And those who wished they were dead and would not be that day, though they’d live sixty more years with missing limbs.

  But where was the King? Surely he would’ve seen what transpired and issued some command. Surely now was the time for a sally: Rally the horse and the rest of the army and put Barrax’s invasion to flight.

  But then Avall remembered the explosions. His heart flip-flopped. He—and Strynn, who was still at least half him—reached out to the King.

  And couldn’t find him.

  Not as an active mind.

  They found something that could’ve been him. They found a memory of surprise, and a memory of fear, and a memory of pain. But they dared not go there. Even with what they faced, what they’d already seen, it was too terrifying.

  Yet they were powerless to resist starting toward the gate, what with a third of Barrax’s army running in rank terror, a third unable to do anything at all, and a third involved with the battle at the rent in the wall. Even there confusion reigned, as soldiers tried to win through from fear as much as desire for conquest.

  It was more than Avall could stand. Too many things too fast, and worse for him than for others, who had only to watch in awe and fear, and remember how to use their weapons and die like honest warriors.

  Not be seeing everything as though one was all things, with the simplest sounds become like pipes and thunder, and the scent of burning a thing to be pondered for years. With half of one’s self wrenched away by someone who was certainly insane.

  Avall fought it, tried to build a shell around himself, careful to bring Strynn with him, and Merryn, such as she could help. Or maybe that was Strynn building the shell. Or even Rann.

  He didn’t exist. He was stretched too thin, like the rainless storm out there.

  But that was diminishing. Or at least he sensed it less clearly, as though a wind were dying down. It was losing its hold on him, too, and as it did, reality clarified.

  Avall looked back at the man on the ridge.

  He had risen now, but his sword no longer stabbed the heavens. Indeed, his stance looked shaky, as he let sword and shield slump to his side and gazed out across the valley. Dead men sprawled below him, in snow trampled to mush, amid which green grass showed in equal parts with black-clad bodies and crimson blood.

  It was Strynn who named him, as the warrior who might have saved Eron toppled forward, touching nothing until his body slammed into the snow at the foot of the cliff—revealing the battered, bleeding, half-naked form of a man, clad in remnants of clothing, weaponry, and armor.

  Rrath—with the sword and the shield and the helm.

  “The King …” Avall said from reflex, though he dared continue neither word nor thought.

  Strynn scowled. “If he�
��s not dead, he might as well be.”

  Merryn glanced toward what passed for a battle at the ruptured wall. “It has to be you,” she said, far too matter-of-factly. “The tide’s turned in our favor. We dare not lose the advantage.”

  “You’re the warrior,” Avall countered, glancing another way. Rrath wasn’t moving.

  “You’re the master of the gems,” Strynn gave back. “You know more about them than I do. More than anyone. And they like you better.”

  A pit of impossible fear yawned in Avall’s stomach. What she said made sense—if only it weren’t he that had to do it. “You saw what they did to Rrath.”

  “I saw what they did to someone who was unprepared, who had no idea what he was doing, and who was probably half-mad anyway. Who, last I heard, was unconscious somewhere in Priest-Hold.”

  “Obviously not,” Strynn snorted. “But you’re right.” She regarded Avall steadily. “It has to be you. And it has to be now.”

  Avall returned that gaze, and knew that everything they’d worked for and suffered for, fought for and worried for during the last few eighths all distilled down to this moment. And to him. “Let’s do it,” he said at last. And wondered if he’d thereby named his doom.

  Strynn nodded solemnly and reached out to hug him, then turned her gaze to Merryn. “If you’ll help him get the armor, I’ll try to get hold of Rann. Eight, but I wish he hadn’t given Gynn his gem.”

  Merryn nodded back, as solemn. “He’ll want to know, if he doesn’t know already.”

  Strynn gave Avall one final, brief hug and dashed away.

  Avall followed her with his eyes for maybe a dozen steps, then looked back at his sister. No one else was around to give orders or forbid them. No one could. Not the King, wherever he was. Not Tryffon, who was preoccupied. Not Eellon, if he still lived, or Tyrill, if she still ran the Council.

  Merryn cuffed his shoulder, as she’d done since they were children. She was grinning like a child, too.

  “There’s another gem somewhere out there,” Avall whispered. “We have no idea if Barrax knows how to work it.”

  “Not from me and not from Eddyn,” Merryn informed him, then lifted a brow, inclining her head toward the parapet. The requisite rope ladders were piled there. The grin widened. “Should take maybe a quarter finger.”

  Avall shrugged, and stepped to the rampart, then reached down, grasped one of the ladders and heaved. Merryn was right beside him, pausing only long enough to tell the nearest guardsman to be ready to hoist if either of them got into trouble.

  It was strange, Avall reckoned, as he eased himself into the embrasure then over the side, how calm he felt. And how calm everyone was, here amidst what was surely the greatest battle Eron had ever seen.

  And then he was descending, hand over hand, foot below foot.

  He jumped the last span because Merryn did, and then the two of them were sprinting across the field, with the remnants of Ixti’s army starting to regroup only now that the lightning storm had dissipated. A quick glance showed the geens still at work, but tiring, and a few arrows starting to fly again. And then they reached Rrath.

  There was no time for nicety, no time to assess his condition save that Merryn said he still lived, though ripped from throat to belly, with disturbing things protruding. Never mind what the fall had surely broken.

  All Avall needed was the helm, which was intact. He loosed the strap roughly, not caring if he hurt Rrath, while Merryn busied herself prying sword and shield from tight-curled fingers.

  This was it: what Gynn would’ve done had he ever had the chance, and which Avall was the only other possible person to do. A pause, while he stood, and then Merryn stood as well: magic sword and magic shield clutched in either hand.

  “Luck, sister,” he said, with a grin. And crammed the helm over his head. He fumbled briefly with the strap, then held out his hands. Merryn nodded solemnly, and passed him first the shield, then the sword. Both settled into his grip as though made for him.

  “Luck,” Merryn whispered, and hugged him. Then: “For Eron.”

  And with that, Avall squeezed sword and shield a certain way, then reached up and pressed the front of the helm into his forehead.

  Something clicked.

  He held his breath while power beyond all power flowed through muscles and blood, bone and skin and brain to welcome him.

  He wasn’t Gynn, however, and the power expected Gynn. But he was kin to Gynn, and was lord of the master-stone, and so he was found acceptable. And then the true glory of everything that had transpired sneaked up and fell on him.

  Avall roared that glory and that power. Then raised his sword and cleft the sky asunder.

  CHAPTER XXXVIII:

  DUEL

  (ERON: PRIEST-CLAN-SUMMER-HIGH SPRING: DAY XIII-EARLY MORNING)

  It took a moment to get the balance right—appropriate, since the regalia had been made for the King of Balance. But while Avall was not Gynn, neither was he Rrath, and the three gems seemed willing to tolerate him. Even so, it was a near-impossible task: absorbing so much power without succumbing to it utterly. Avall sank to his knees as energies crackled through him. He fought it—had to, to retain his self—but eventually he recalled how it was supposed to be. The gem in the helm tapped into the brain. It was the coordinator, the thing that sorted the demands made by the rest of him.

  The sword was the outlet. When he reached into the Overworld with his mind, that was where the power he found there and released here had to go.

  As for the shield: it took whatever force was applied to it and channeled it back to the Overworld in turn, so that balance between the two was maintained. All of which he knew more or less instinctively.

  In truth, there was no language for what occurred—yet. If Lykkon wanted to chronicle it, he’d have to pluck the sensations from Avall’s mind. Which would be a daunting task.

  Avall had a more daunting task before him.

  His first slash—across the sky at nothing—had been reflex. A test flourish, nothing more. Yet it had called down lightning.

  If he was careful he could call down something much more dire.

  And so he started forward, first at a jog, then at a run. Some of Ixti’s braver troops were starting to regroup, and the sight of this preposterous Eronese lad hard on their heels must surely be amusing. Few had seen Rrath’s wielding of this incredible, impossible weapon; and fewer still had seen Avall’s reprise. Most probably thought it merely another explosion, or one last sally of that unexpected storm. But they were turning now, a few were drawing bows. He scowled. Enough of this, he thought—and reached into the Overworld. Finding what passed for substance there, he gathered it up with the phantom sword that existed there as well, then brought both through the barrier between. A prayer to Fate for guidance, and he swept the sword before him, at the same time releasing what it held. It was something between flame and lightning—not the natural lightning Rrath had called—and it flashed from the sword’s tip in a smooth, bright swath of thunderous power. It struck the men nearest and cut them, burned them, and blasted them with lightning all at once. Those in the forefront died. Shields availed little. He strode forward again, and the tide of enemy moved back. He was ten spans from the tower walls now, and fifty spans from the gate. The nearest live men were ten spans or more from him.

  Behind him, he heard Merryn yelling—and cheering the Eronese on.

  Avall didn’t dare look back, for a volley of arrows arched his way. He raised the shield reflexively, and let instinct and the gems do the rest. He wished those arrows gone, their force reduced to naught, and so it happened. Any that neared the shield simply weren’t. Or else an onlooker might see them lose their force and fall, an ineffectual rain of sticks. Avall could follow them farther, to where the force they commanded was siphoned to the Overworld to replace what had been stolen from there.

  He was, he realized, invulnerable, as long as the shield drank the force of incoming blows or missiles.

  Tha
t gave him confidence—though he was scared to death, for the gems seemed to glory in what he was about. Which revolted him. He’d never been one for violence, though he could swing a sword as well as the next man. But killing men or women—How many would he have to slay before Ixti surrendered?

  Perhaps he should seek Barrax himself. Barrax who had the master gem, and might be fool enough to wield it.

  What would happen then? Would it be gem against gem, with people reduced to vessels of power? Or would that first and strongest gem overwhelm the combined might of the rest?

  For now it didn’t matter, because the nearest part of the Ixtian force had turned again, this time under the command of one of their more impressive officers, and were charging.

  Once again he raised the sword, and sowed death and Overworld fire through the foe. Few emerged unscathed, for the force penetrated as deep into the ranks as there was straight-line access.

  Men screamed and howled, and those in front who survived threw down their weapons. Some were cut down by those coming up behind, but often enough those, too, turned to flee.

  The commander had lost his horse, and the leather on his thighs was smoking, but still he advanced: brave, if nothing else.

  Avall moved to meet him. Six spans … five … three. Avall could see his eyes as he approached.

  Avall hesitated, then moved in. Two spans …

  They closed.

  The man swung his sword.

  Avall met it—he thought—for there was a flash of light and the tiniest resistance, and then his blade sheared through.

  The Ixtian threw down the stump, and launched himself straight at Avall, drawing his geen-claw dagger.

  Avall parried with his shield, not wanting to kill a man whose eyes he’d seen.

  The man struck the shield. Fire exploded, and the man went hurtling back, minus several finger depths of armor, skin, and flesh.