by Eric Nylund
“Then kneel, hero,” Sealiah commanded. Robert did. The Queen passed the sword down his left side, over his head (without touching the poisoned blade to his shoulders as was traditional) and then down his right side. “I declare you my champion on this battlefield. Rise, Sir Robert Farmington, Captain of the Legion of Lotus, and wielder of Saliceran, the God-Broken.”
She gingerly turned the sword and Robert took it. He stared into the pattern of light and dark metal, fascinated.
Sealiah unbuckled the sword’s sheath and handed it over. She then stood on her tiptoes and kissed Robert on both cheeks. . and as she did so, looked at Fiona.
Fiona glowered and her hands clenched.
Sealiah then stiffened and looked across the Valley. “Ready yourselves,” she told them. “Destroy everything you touch.”
And with that, she strode back to her army.
“Why’d you take that thing?” Fiona rasped at Robert.
Robert turned from her. “Why not?”
Fiona’s mouth opened and she stared at him. “Why? Let try: it’s evil? A gift from an Infernal? Come on, Robert! It’s a trick.”
“Is it a trick,” Robert said, “that the Queen gave me something that might save my life out there?” He turned back and met Fiona’s eyes. “Maybe it bugs you because it levels the playing field between you and me, huh?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means you’ve enjoyed bossing everyone around all year. That now that I have some power of my own”-he shook the sword-“you don’t like it.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said through clenched teeth.
Eliot wanted to step between them, say something, and fix this. He knew better, though. They’d just focus all their unresolved issues on him-and that wouldn’t do anyone any good.
It was so obvious they cared for each other. Equally obvious that they didn’t understand each other.
Fiona had all this power, but more than that, she had all the responsibility that went with that power and being Team Captain and a goddess in the League of Immortals. She felt like she had to protect everyone and win every fight. She’d forgotten that she wasn’t alone.
And Robert? He just wanted to be near Fiona. Surrounded by Immortals and magical families, Eliot could only guess how inadequate he must feel-especially after he’d been fired by the League.
Eliot felt sorry for them.
Robert loved his sister. Fiona probably loved Robert, too, despite her recent dates with Mitch Stephenson. Mitch was nice, had magic, prestige, and was the most well-mannered guy Eliot had ever met. . but he wasn’t Robert. He’d never be the first person Fiona had fallen for.
Robert ducked his head as if he was about to apologize-but the poison dripping off Saliceran smoldered and bust into crackling blue flames.66
Fiona backed off three steps. Robert, too, as he held out the sword at arm’s length.
“That’s different,” he whispered.
He sheathed the broken, flaming blade. It extinguished with a sizzle.
Robert and Fiona looked at one another, their anger suddenly quenched as well.
Fiona reached out for Robert. Her brow scrunched together, as she tried to say something.
Which was when Eliot heard the roar of the Mephistopheles’ army-a hundred thousand strong-as they charged across the valley.
66. The magical nature of the God-broken sword, Saliceran, mirrors the heart of its wielder. When held by Infernals, it drips poisons with a wide variety of effects (most involve a painful, lingering death). In the hands a true hero with a noble purpose, it glows or flames. Other accounts have the weapon singing, and even fighting on its own. Of course, it’s most unspeakable incarnation manifested at the end of the Fifth Celestial Age when wielded by one of the Immortal-angel hybrid Post progeny. Gods of the First and Twenty-first Century, Volume 13, Infernal Forces. Zypheron Press Ltd., Eighth Edition.
77 TIDE OF BATTLE
Eliot almost dropped Lady Dawn. Nothing had prepared him for tens of thousands of screaming patchwork men, roaring beasts, and buzzing insects that filled the valley and echoed off the mesa.
Robert and Fiona took a step toward that battle cry. How could they be so brave? Was that courage or crazy?
This was Eliot’s fight, if anyone’s, and he felt shaken to the core by that sound. . not drawn to the battle. His cheeks heated with shame.
Fiona turned to him. “We have to go. Do what you can.”
Her face was lined with worry, but then it hardened as her thoughts focused to what Eliot’s had come to know as her “cutting” mind-set.
Robert clasped Eliot’s forearm, said nothing-just gave him a nod.
Fiona and Robert raced toward Sealiah’s defensive lines and vanished in the crowds.
Eliot took a deep breath to steady himself. They were counting on him. He faced his band. “Just follow me,” he said.
Kurt, Sid, and Bon nodded. James and Janis cleared their throats and grabbed their microphones.
Eliot would try something soft to start with, try to quell the violent noise from the opposing army and drain their fury. He wasn’t sure how to do that, though; so he tried a few simple notes to feel his way forward.
Sid jumped in right after him on his bass, the beat too fast.
Kurt followed, then stopped as their notes clashed and he realized that wasn’t where Eliot was headed.
Bon released his bagpipe’s mouthpiece, looking disgusted.
“Hang on,” Eliot said. “This isn’t working.”
And why should it? They’d never played together before. Eliot had never played with anyone before.
He looked over the edge of the mesa. In the vanguard of Mephistopheles’ charging army were black-and-blue splotched dinosaurs-velociraptors, an Allosaurus, and a Tyrannosaurus that sprinted ahead. A good (if not terrifying) choice. If Eliot could have formed anything from the shadows, a few hundred tons of razor-clawed killing machines would have been his pick as well. They’d tear though Sealiah’s phalanx.
Behind the extinct reptiles ran centaurs (patchwork men stitched together with their own horses), legions of axmen, sinuous panthers, and truck-sized ants with huge mandibles.
The giant Mephistopheles extended his hand from the thunderheads swirling about him. He stabbed with his massive pitchfork into the river, and the water froze about it-the river crackling and turning to ice along its entire length.
The Infernal Lord left his weapon there. Smoke in the air materialized into a new pitchfork, and he led his reserve forces across the now-solid river.
Eliot blinked and forced himself to look from the monster. He ran his hand over Lady Dawn’s smooth wood grain. He had to focus on what he was good at: Making things happen with his music.
His band looked worried, but also eager to try.
“Follow this,” he told them. “Sid, you first.”
Sid’s lip curled back, half smile, half grimace.
Eliot started with the first music he’d learned: the simple “Mortal’s Coil.”
Five notes in and Sid jumped in with the beat. He got it perfect and bobbed his head to the rhythm.
Eliot imagined six kids running around a Maypole, laughing and singing. He took it as a good sign.
He nodded at Kurt, who joined him, perfectly matching Eliot’s notes.
Then Bon added to the song with a low moan from his bagpipes.
Janis and James start to sing, both a little dissonant, but together harmonizing:
Girls and boys run too fast
wheel o’ life never lasts
grown up and knowing sin
that’s when fun really begins!
Eliot picked up the pace, changed the tone from light to dark-and his band followed as neatly as if they were linked and he’d yanked them along.
The image of a Maypole danced in his mind, and all of them pranced around it, the colored ribbons tangled about the pole and their hands.
Eliot felt like th
ey had been bound to his music and his will.
That was creepy. But okay, for now, because it was also extraordinarily useful.
He glanced at Sealiah’s defenders bracing on the edge of the mesa. The phalanx tightened their formation. Archers clustered about lit braziers and readied bows.
At the very edges of her army, Eliot spied his father, dressed in black leather and holding two curved swords. He grinned, stepped to the shadows, and could no longer be seen.
So Louis wasn’t a complete cheater and coward. He was going to fight. There was more to his father that Eliot had realized.
The Queen’s personal knights made a ring about her as she knelt and touched the earth. The ground moved; roots appeared from her fingertips. A shudder ran through the mesa.
Several men on the walls shouted and pointed below.
Along the steep slope and about the base of the mesa, vines wormed to the surface, coiled and uncoiled and sprouted fleshy leaves that split into Venus flytraps large enough to snap up a cow. Along every branch extruded spikes that oozed sap. The vegetation grew and piled up on itself until it was high as a man and wider than a two-lane highway.
Sealiah collapsed, one hand forestalling her fall. Her knights came to help her, but she waved them off and shakily got to her feet.
The shadow dinosaurs hit this wall of thorns-impaled on the living spikes, they died there. But more came, and leaped upon the backs of their fallen numbers-and hurtled over the barrier.
Behind them, the centaurs and axmen hacked at the vegetation, some throwing themselves on the tangles to become bridges.
“Light arrows!” Sealiah cried.
Her archers lit arrows, notched them, and pulled back their long bows.
“Fire!” she commanded.
A cloud of spiraling flame rose into the air, over the defenders, and down the slopes-hitting the charging dinosaurs, felling them by the dozens-and more arrows plunking farther down the steep banks-lighting the wall of vines.
The sap ignited and flared like napalm, sputtering from the plants. The coils of vegetation blazed.
A thousand of Mephistopheles’ warriors writhed and cooked in the tangles. Their screams mingled with the smoke filling the air.
There were, however, thousands more behind them, all pushing forward. They threw themselves on fire by the hundreds to smother the flames; others slashed at the vines while hands and arms blistered and burned.
The enemy breached the wall of flaming thorns, streamed though, pushing and cutting, and made the way larger.
Eliot cranked the gain on Lady Dawn to the sixth notch. He nodded with grim determination at his band. They nodded back, understanding they had to do more.
He belted out the opening chord of “The March of the Suicide Queen,” curdling the notes with a heavy metal edge.
After a beat, his band joined him. A wall of sound erupted from the amplifiers.
James and Janis sang:
Show no mercy
Ask no quarter.
Rivers of blood
blade and mortar.
Eliot pumped his arm, feeling the hoofbeats of his summoned cavalry; the bass punctuated the air with the echoes of cannon shot, sustained by a long wail from Bon’s bagpipes and James and Janis. . that became the battle cry of the dead Napoleonic soldiers-
— as they materialized, marching forth upon the steep slopes between Sealiah and Mephistopheles’ forces.
French horsemen lowered their visors and set their lances; riflemen stopped in an orderly line and leveled their muskets, men wheeled cannons into place, aimed high, and lit fuses. Musket shot and cannonball and flashing hooves and sabers cut down the onrushing hordes of darkness.
They clashed and fought and died-on both sides-by the hundreds. The slope grew muddy and slick with blood.
Eliot and his band played on.
More soldiers appeared and fought, and screamed, and died for him.
Not enough, though.
Mephistopheles and the vast bulk of his remaining army reached the base of the mesa. The clouds darkened.
Patchwork soldiers and giant ants tore through Eliot’s exhausted army.
Eliot stopped playing. His arm was numb, and he felt as if he’d run out of notes in the song. There had to be some limit on how many ghosts he could raise.
A hundred centaurs broke though and charged Sealiah’s phalanx.
The Queen’s warriors set their rifle lances.
The centaurs fell upon them, hacked and clawed-but their assault was thrown back and they tumbled down the slope.
Archers rained death on the enemy as their ranks slipped and struggled in the mud.
The glowing red eyes of the Infernal Lord surveyed the terrain, and his terrible tactical situation. Mephistopheles thrust his pitchfork into the ground and it crackled and frosted, spreading up the hillside, freezing bodies and streams of blood in place, turning the landscape into a gruesome collection of solid shadow, contorted anatomy, and broken weapons.
The Infernal shouted, and it sounded like thunder.
His army roared in response-and charged up the hill with renewed strength.
Sealiah ordered the howitzers that squatted upon her walls to fire, and commanded the industrial cranes to tip their loads.
Eliot gaped as Mephistopheles’ armies stumbled and faltered. Shells exploded about them; tumbling rocks and debris crushed them; clouds of arrows pierced them.
Ten thousand lay destroyed before Sealiah’s final defenses.
Mephistopheles raised his pitchfork, and with a low growl, motioned them away from the Twelve Towers Mesa.
His scattered forces, stopped, turned, and retreated.
Had Sealiah won?
Eliot had never imagined the tide of battle could have turned so fast.
The Queen of the Poppies moved to the front of her line. She called for a horse and an Andalusian mare was brought to her. She hoisted herself into the saddle and took up a rose-twinned lance.
“Trample their bones!” she shouted.
A cheer rose from her army. Sealiah’s cavalry, the Knights of the Thorned Rose, joined her, and they charged at breakneck speed down the hillside. Soldiers and archers followed.
Eliot spied Mr. Welmann on horseback, too, a gun in one hand, a cutlass in the other.
He also spotted Robert and Fiona moving more cautiously down the treacherous slope, straight for Mephistopheles.
This was wrong. How had Mephistopheles, who had steadily won battle after battle and gained so much land, power, and troops. . so badly miscalculated?
Sealiah should have stayed put, reloaded her artillery, and shored up her defenses.
But she’d sensed victory. She’d smelled blood.
Eliot smelled it as well and his pulse pounded. Bloodlust. It was intoxicating. It clouded his thinking.
And he bet Mephistopheles knew that, too.
Sealiah and her knights rode down and trampled everything in their path.
Mephistopheles and his armies retreated to the river’s edge. The Infernal Lord grasped the pitchfork embedded in the ice, the one he had used earlier to freeze the river. With a crack, he pulled it free, shattering the frozen layer, sending a massive ripple up and down the length of the waterway.
Eliot didn’t get it. He’d just blocked his own retreat.
Unless. .
. . this had been a lure to draw Sealiah out.
From the depths of the river for miles in both directions, shadow creatures and dripping patchwork men emerged onto the bank. Thousands of them appeared from their murky underwater hiding place-and they kept coming, drenched and nearly frozen. . but ready to fight as they swelled the enemy’s ranks.
Mephistopheles laughed. It was the sound of bones shattering and metal wrenching.
It made Eliot want to hide and close his eyes. It was as if everything he’d been through in the last year vanished; he was a little kid again hiding under the covers, afraid of the dark.
The two armies met on t
he slopes.
Sealiah’s forces had momentum, but they were now vastly outnumbered.
They fought valiantly, slashing and shooting. The Poppy Queen’s warriors pulled back into defensive circles-but they were no match for Mephistopheles as he laid waste to scores of knights with a single swipe of his pitchfork.
Queen Sealiah touched the earth and screamed her frustration.
It was frozen. Nothing could grow here.
Eliot snapped out of the terror that gripped him.
He shifted his mental gears and prepared to play his most powerful piece of music, “The Symphony of Existence.” He’d jump to the last movement about the end of the world; he’d bring earthquake and floods.
And while he was sure that would work. . wouldn’t that destroy both sides down there? He had nowhere near the control he’d need to keep from killing Robert and Fiona, too.
Fiona, chain in hand, sliced her way through the shadow legions, moving toward the Infernal Lord.
All about her Eliot glimpsed flashes of silver-the lighting fast motions of two curved blades. It was Louis. He was there. Then not. Then back-stepping from shadow to shadow and never appearing in the between spaces. His father cut down patchwork soldier, panther, and the countless nameless things that rose from the dark to strike from behind at Fiona.
Without Fiona ever noticing.
She fought her way forward-to within a hundred yards of Mephistopheles.
Robert, however, got to him first. Saliceran blazed in his hand, and he didn’t even have to touch the shadows to make them wither and die. Robert looked strong and courageous. He was the real hero here-not Eliot-no matter what pronouncements the League had made.
With that flaming sword, Robert might have a chance against a creature that was part shadow.
Eliot knew then how he could help.
He turned to his band. “I’ve got to play something. . personal,” he whispered.
“You play it, baby,” Janis murmured and set her hands over her chest. “Go ahead and I’ll sing my heart out for you.”
The others in his banded nodded.
Eliot played “Julie’s Song.”
More than anything now he wanted to hear the hope in that song. . and with luck, see the light that’d come with that hope. Light enough maybe to weaken the shadowy Mephistopheles.