Only, it wasn’t enough. The plateau was overrun. Whatever line had been in place was all but lost. I couldn’t chance Malaq’s life to a fragile, newborn solidarity. One error or misstep, and the enemy would be on him in an instant.
I tossed the snowy, wet hair from my eyes and measured the distance. Malaq was at least a hundred paces out. He was deep in the thick of it. There were no open spaces, only swinging arms and clashing steel and little air in between. With the battle this tight, casting would bring casualties on both sides. Yet, magic was inevitable. If the swell kept its rapid pace forward, it would likely take a spell to stop the gate from being overrun. I wondered how its defense was faring, and if Jarryd were still a part of it. His adrenaline kept time with mine, but there was no hope of seeing him. Certainly, I’d never hear him over the din. Neither would Malaq hear me until I was on top of him. The grunts and cries, the cracks of bodies breaking and weapons meeting, was a strident song no man’s ears could pick apart. But an eldring’s can.
A furry back was at the edge of my vision.
All I needed was blood and magic to reopen my connection.
Borrowing their senses and strength will help me reach Malaq a hell of a lot faster.
I hit Jarryd with a surge of caution, and cut off our link. Setting sights on the closest knot of eldring, I veered off in their direction. As I fought my way through, I reached in. The crown’s auras surfaced and my exertion was forgotten. My body moved on instinct as the nine auras climbed to override all else. They wanted to climb higher. They wanted to scale my defenses and rip them down. Recognizing my circumstances, feeding off my aggression and the heat of battle, the crown begged me to cast, to obliterate. The hot tingle of my scars reminded me how easily it could be done. It reminded me I was more now.
Temptation and curiosity butted in, asking: how much more?
It was a question I couldn’t afford to answer. Not here, channeling the Crown of Stones amid another desperate battle. I was too close to repeating history. Only it wasn’t a Queen’s life on the line this time, it was a King’s.
But I’m smarter now, more disciplined. I know what to expect.
It’ll be different this time.
Sienn said control hinged on finding one thing that inspired me more than magic, a source of contentment that rivaled the pleasure. Something I wanted more than the euphoria that came with casting. At the time I couldn’t fathom what that might be. Now, it seemed so clear.
There was only one thing. There had always been one thing. I’d just been too blind to see it.
A blade skimmed my cheek, drawing blood and my wandering attention. A snapping broken jaw wagged a wordless battle cry in my face. I jumped back from both, but the thick slush disturbed my pivot. As I lashed out with a return thrust, the ground shook with a sudden blast of sound. It shook again, and I was suddenly lying on the blood-coated snow face first, wondering how I got here.
I wasn’t the only one. Half the battlefield was on the ground with me. A large-scale shock had muted the din and stilled the fighting. I looked around at my fellow combatants floundering in the frosty gore, and an uncanny familiarity settled in. Years burned away. And I saw it all in a single disturbing flash: the quake that calmed the battle, my discovery of the crown, the death of my lover and thousands more.
Yet the tremors that had bested us today were not the fault of a quake. This time the blame wasn’t on nature. It was on man. One man, I thought, as the low rumble of heavy wheels vibrated the ground.
The bastard had given no call of retreat. Elek was rolling his machines out over a clogged battlefield. Discharging his weapons with no thought to who was in the way, including Malaq.
I bounced as the ground danced again, and again. Near simultaneous explosions echoed over us and a billow of smoke shot up near the gate. Debris went with it and came down red.
Picking myself up, I located the nearest pack of eldring. I needed their attention.
I needed something else, too.
A dead Rellan with a rancid chest wound lunged at me. Instinct made my arm itch to block him. I ignored it and walked straight into the point of his blade.
FORTY THREE
The scar’s protection wouldn’t let me bleed to death. Yet it seemed to be finicky with pain, as with another, closer explosion, I was back to the ground with my head smacking the ice and my opponent landing on my chest. I felt both. He kicked at my wound as he got up. Red ran over the sides of me, escaping the scars reach and flowing out to stain the mush like an overturned cup of wine.
I moved to strike the bastard, and steel flashed above me. A spray of putrid fluid rained down, and my attacker’s arm was suddenly beside me—then his head, with scraggly cords and tendons hanging from the rotting cavities. I looked up, assuming Jarryd. The Rellan face looming over me was a good fifteen years older and significantly scruffier. His strapping form was wrapped in leather and a draping of wolf pelt.
I recognized him immediately. “Dolan?” What I couldn’t grasp was why he was in Langor, when the fool should have been anywhere else. When I freed Jarryd from prison I’d boosted Dolan and his fellow inmates with enough magical protection to escape Darkhorne. My spell turned the potential nightmare of a riot into the perfect cover for Jarryd’s rescue. It also liberated hundreds from the horrors of the most notorious prison in Langor.
Dolan spun. He took two more heads with one swing of his massive axe. As the bodies crumbled like kindling, he flipped the weapon into a holster on his back and spun to face me.
“L’tarian Reth.” A grin showed through his caked beard. “Something told me I’d find you here.”
“Can’t say I felt the same.” I sat up with a groan. “Why the hell are you in Langor?”
“Seems like the popular place to be.” Dolan crouched to help me up. Sheathing a sword, I took his offered hand, and a spark of vibration passed between us.
I pulled back, confused by the heavy layer of magic pulsing over his skin. “That’s my spell. The one I put on you in the forge.”
“You said three days.” Dolan’s smile was pure mischief. “It’s been a while longer. I thought maybe you’d know why, but…” At the bewilderment in my eyes, he shrugged. “The reason stopped mattering on day four. What’s important now is what we do with it.”
Dolan’s gallantry impressed me. His words sunk in. “We?” I scanned the area and spotted dozens of men dressed in the same way as Dolan, with the pelt shirt over leather. They’d formed a circle around us that none could enter. “You’re all still shielded?”
“Every prisoner I touched that day. Everyone I passed your spell onto. We tire and grow hungry. We wrench our backs and skin our knuckles. We live as any other men. But in battle—” Pivoting in the slush, Dolan threw an arm up, earning not a scratch as he blocked an oncoming sword. Standing, wrenching the weapon from its Shinree owner, Dolan grabbed the man and snapped his neck. “As you see, no blow can touch us. We are as strong as the stones you cast upon.” Dolan tossed the body. I tried not to care as my kinsmen fell dead. But the man wasn’t a soldier. He was old. He’d likely lived his whole life on Kayn’l. He had no business holding a sword, let alone stepping foot on a field of battle.
None of them do. Jem liberated our people and sent them off to die.
“When Rella’s King issued a call for help,” Dolan said, “it was our duty to answer.”
I tore my gaze from the dead Shinree man. “He’s not just Rella’s King anymore, Dolan. Draken is dead. Malaq rules Mirra’kelan now.”
“Dead?” Satisfaction burned in Dolan’s eager gaze. “Then the quicker we end this, the sooner you and I knock cups in celebration. Is there a plan of attack? We arrived a little late.”
An arm against my bleeding stomach, I grunted as Dolan helped me stand. Smoke had claimed the area in front of the gate. Within the ashen clouds were the pliable silhouettes of men at war. Imposing, ha
rd-angled shapes dwarfed them. “Have you seen the Arullan machines?”
“Not up close.” Dolan threw his large fist into an oncoming Kaelish jaw. Pulling his axe, he swung in an upward arc and cleaved the man’s face near in half. “Been a little busy with this stampede,” he said, pivoting back. “What’s on your mind?”
“The Arullan weapons were to stay behind the wall until Malaq gave the order. Whatever hits their line of sight—man, beast, ally, or foe—will be destroyed. Deploying them defies the King’s directive and puts us all in jeopardy.”
Dolan’s jaw hardened. “What would you have me do?”
“Stop them. It won’t be easy. But if anyone can do it, I’m guessing it would be you and your men.”
“A challenge? Good,” he laughed. “I’m getting bored with these glazed-eyed fools and fusty corpses.” Spinning toward an encroaching Langorian, Dolan gave the hefty man a boot to the groin and a blade to the throat. “And what you of you, Shinree?”
I gestured ahead. “I’m off to retrieve our zealous King.”
Dolan glanced past me at the roaring, undulating ocean of combatants. No one man could be distinguished. “You’ll never find him alone. Take some of my men.”
“Thanks, but I have other help in mind. Once I get him back, I want you and your men on Malaq until this war is over.”
“It would be my privilege.” Dolan glanced at the wound in my gut. “I’d magic that shut if I were you. The scent will have those eldring on you like flies on a dung pile.”
I’m counting on it.
Dolan rejoined the fight. Hits bounced off his body. He didn’t even flinch. I’d made him like my dutiful mare, Kya. But how much like her? Kya hadn’t aged or sickened in years. She hadn’t suffered even a scratch during the eldring attack on Kabri. Not even magic drained her.
Gods, is that what I did to him? Had the crown allowed me to unintentionally bestow such a gift on Dolan and his men?
Or is it a curse?
Turning away from the repercussions of either, I found the eldring again and took off. Red peppered the snow as I jogged. I put my hand over the wound I’d voluntarily taken. It ached with each step. The cut wasn’t overly deep, but I’d made sure the blade penetrated between the scars so they wouldn’t immediately repair it. I wanted the blood.
An eldring lifted his snout from the chest cavity it was buried in. Taking stock of me, his nose twitched. His orangey eyes gleamed with eagerness in the overcast light. I wondered if Jem had successfully trained the nocturnal beasts to withstand the daylight, or if they were made to endure the discomfort. Whichever, this eldring’s gaze held no recognition. What I’d done to their kind carried no weight under Jem’s influence. I was simply dinner.
I stopped. The eldring dropped to all fours. As he padded toward me, I woke the crown’s magic. Auras slipped into my veins, saturating the slender passages like floodwater takes a stream; filling the channel and bursting from its edges. Their invasion offered respite from the biting cold and the itch of fluids drying on my skin, but it had no sway over the prickling of my scars. I felt them on a different level now. I felt their significance. I understood how different runes had distinct vibrations. The energy, the burning, was the result of all those unique impressions overlapping. Once I could read them, I’d be able to pluck out the information needed to destroy the crown. Access spells not cast in centuries.
I could learn so much.
The notion was more appealing than I expected. What I carried in me wasn’t merely a necessity. It was a chance to know my people in a way no other Shinree had before. It was an honor. One I wouldn’t retain long enough to realize.
The eldring increased his speed. Others took notice of his target. As they chomped unhurried on ribbons of skin and dangling entrails, they paused to inhale my scent. Their curiosity was evident, but they stayed put. Amid a feast, why squabble over a single claimed prey?
The gap closed. No longer needing a lure, I channeled the stones on my braces and turned attention to my wound. Employing ruby to staunch the flow of blood, I took spinel to repair the internal tissue damage and the external tear in my skin. I cast, and the cries of men and the slam of metal, the distant rumble of Arullan machines—the sights, scents, and sounds of the entire battle—vanished. Pleasure wiped reality from existence. It rushed back just as fast.
My unsteady legs stumbled. The eldring’s did too. I didn’t take time to see who else was affected. Casting on myself should have drained little, if any, from the outside world.
Clearly, Fate’s warning was ringing true. My spells were hungrier.
The eldring’s body filled my sights. I cringed at the flecks of soldier-meat dotting his mud-slick pelt. A wide, gaping laceration spanned his right front leg. Blood flowed freely. Perfect.
He raised a furry arm to swipe, and I slammed the hilt of my sword into his groin. In the moment of his recoil, I gathered diamond to enhance our link and obsidian for the strength not to lose myself in it. Then I shoved my fingers—wet with the blood of my own wound—into the open seam of his.
Pain struck my ears at his thunderous howl. I was still reeling from the echo as his clawed grip seized my wrist. He tried to force the sword from my grasp. But as my connection to his kind rekindled, I didn’t feel the talons or the pressure. I felt the clenching of his muscles as he squeezed. The anticipation of a new, fresh feed filling his mouth with saliva. Ravenous hunger tightened his belly like a vice.
It was always there now, the emptiness. His thirst was never quenched. He could drink the sweet liquid until it overflowed his maw and ran warm down his chin, but it was never enough. It wouldn’t be until the enemy was dead. When the last of those that opposed the master were gone, so would be the famine.
That’s it. That’s how he’s controlling them.
My father had taken the eldring’s most basic want—the need that drove them above all else—and lashed it to his own. He made them believe that killing in his name would make the emptiness go away. Their hunger won’t ease until he allows it.
He’ll never allow it. That’s what they don’t understand, what they can’t understand.
So they keep killing.
I’d found the crux of the spell. But it was wound too closely around their core to be easily broken. And I didn’t have time for trial and error. Not when Malaq’s life was at stake.
Focusing on to what I’d come for, I dived deeper into the eldring.
It was like falling.
Yet at the same time, I was held by it all; the magic moving in me, the vibrating heat of the scars, and the whirlwind of the eldring mind. The influx of sensations and memories were intoxicating. I could have spun in their embrace forever. Except there was that one thing dragging me back out. Its pull wasn’t new. I’d used the same anchor before. It was just stronger now that I recognized the truth. I’d identified the one thing worth dying for as much as it was coming back to. Something I wanted more than magic and the pleasure it gave.
One thing that was more beautiful and compelling than any other.
Sienn.
The battle came back with a sudden roar. I was on one knee surrounded by men and beasts tearing into each other. I scrambled up and ran.
Pulling in the icy air faster than my body could use it, I drew my other sword. I glanced back. The eldring was on his haunches. He was staring dazedly across the plateau like he wasn’t seeing it. I left the beast to interpret our bond in his own way, whittled my focus down, and pushed on.
Letting my body operate on instinct, I filled my mind with one thought: Malaq. I pictured him on the beach in Kabri, defending the island from the eldring attack. I perceived him as they did, in the usual varying shades of purplish gray. But his soft body wrapped in cloth isn’t what defined Malaq Roarke. Not to the eldring. What set the man apart, what was recorded in their memories, was the smell of his sweat running down to fill
the creases of strain lining his face. The sound of leather creaking as his body moved; strong legs and broad shoulders shifting with each swing. It was in the fragrant life-giving fluid escaping his wounds, and the waves of heat coming off him with each swift pump of his heart.
I detected it all in near overlying succession; the nuances that were his own. I held them in my grasp and reached out. Combing through the mass of bodies, all stinking of wrath, fear, and death, I searched. I stretched my borrowed eldring senses as far as they would go. And I got a whiff.
Following it, I swerved a hard left and headed out, away from the keep. Moving like the wind, I skated over the ice. I tore through the throng, punching through skulls, cracking desiccated ribs. Pulled relentlessly forward by Malaq’s scent, with eldring strength and speed I cleared a path to the back edge of the plateau.
When I reached my target, it took effort to calm the eldring senses and see him with my own. As I did, I realized Malaq was in trouble. Half his Rellan detail was gone. Those remaining couldn’t disengage to aid their King who was on his knees with Langorian hands wrapped around his throat.
His color gone, his patch askew, Malaq’s remaining eye was huge in panic as he battered his opponent. He sliced Natalia into what flesh he could reach. His spelled foe didn’t even flinch.
Malaq’s resistance waned. The sword fell from his grip.
I ran up alongside and slashed through the wrists of Malaq’s captor. A fountain of blood poured from the stumps. I kicked the body down and Malaq struck the lingering hands away. He slumped over, catching himself just shy of hitting the frosty ground.
I slammed my swords away and crouched before him. “You okay?”
“Lovely,” he croaked out in a raspy whisper. Malaq ran a shaky arm across his gore-splattered face. I didn’t have the heart to tell him it didn’t help. Struggling to slow his breathing, he panted at me. “Thank the gods…your timing has finally…improved.”
The Crown of Stones: Magic-Borne Page 37