“Turns out Fate liked me more than I thought.” I took hold with both hands and lifted Malaq to his feet. “You sure you’re okay?”
Nodding, he gave me a sideways glance. “If you’re out here, it means either you found nothing or…?”
“Everything. I found everything.”
“Then you should be long gone.”
“And you should be behind the wall.”
“A scout reported in, moments before the battle.” Malaq wiped his face again. He righted his patch and gestured loosely into the falling snow. “I had to see for myself.”
I followed his stare to the edge of the conflict, where the last line of clashing bodies stood dark against an empty, thickening fog. “What am I looking for?”
“More.”
“I thought we assumed this wasn’t his full force.”
“It’s not just men, Ian. Jem Reth turned the animals against us.”
“Animals?”
“You doubt their impact? Packs of wolves and hill cats march among their soldiers. Winter raptors fly above their heads. They have wild dogs and skin bears. Add in the eldring, and Jem has way more claws and teeth on his side than I care to count.”
“How far out?”
“A day, maybe less, depends how fast they travel and how accurate my scout’s story is. He was spent and half froze to death when he came in. That’s why I had to know if it was delusion or fact. I need to know how to prepare.”
“Now you need to stay alive. The troops have seen you fight, Malaq. They get that you’re willing to die for them. It’s time to pull back.” Objection was on the tip of his tongue. I squashed it. “I don’t know if you heard this far out, but Elek’s making use of his machines.”
“What?” Malaq’s grimy features stiffened. Warily, he asked, “The gate?”
“Intact. This wasn’t a necessary move. Elek issued no withdrawal, no warning. He knows you’re out here.” I left Malaq with that revelation and turned to his nearest soldier. His instincts primed for battle, the man recoiled when I grabbed his arm. “Gather your men and fall back to the gate. The enemy is advancing too fast. I need to stop them.”
“Ian,” Malaq said forcefully as the man moved off. “Your magic is vital to this fight but…” he eyed the scars on my face. “I don’t want to lose you to it.”
“You won’t,” I said, backing away toward the outskirts of the plateau. “I know what the scars mean.”
“It’s about time,” he breathed. “I hope it’s something less dangerous than the eldring spell.”
“Actually…” Turning from him, I picked up the pace. “It’s more.”
Malaq called after me. “What’s more dangerous than an eldring?”
I grinned as I threw him a glance. “Knowledge.”
FORTY FOUR
The air blew in violent bursts, piercing my wet clothes and tossing my hair as I sat, perched on a rock at the brink of the slope. In my trek away from the fight to the plateau’s end, the snow had turned to rain. Great sheets of white were coming loose, sliding down the sheer slant in front of me. It was a long descent. Occasional leafless trees interfered with their escape, but the bulk of the melt traveled unimpeded to the valley below. The thaw was happening on the neighboring slopes as well. The basin in between would be water-logged in no time.
I could make it more so.
My plan wouldn’t stop what was coming. I had no interest in wiping out all wildlife from the surrounding mountains. But I had to slow them down. They were coming faster than Malaq believed. Their mingled scents assaulted my nostrils, pricking my still active eldring senses with the stench of unwashed hide and skin. The musk of fur came in a tantalizing variety. It was yet two peaks over, but it was strong and unmistakable.
The scout was right. My father was getting creative.
And frugal. Small animal minds were easier to control. The spell would take less magic, less concentration. It would be less problematic for his transforming body.
I should leave him to it. Let him turn instead of killing him.
No. An eldring life is too good for him.
With a shake, I disengaged my eldring senses. I pinpointed my thoughts on the crown’s magic. It responded quickly. I imagined their rainbow, curving and dipping, gliding though me like the serpentine colors in the well. The usual pleasure took me. Beneath it was an underlying sense of serenity. It was quieter here, away from the battle, but my sudden bout of tranquility was internal, and simple.
Wisdom trumped fear.
I knew what was happening to me.
I knew what I had to do.
I knew how it was going to end.
With a deep, cleansing breath, I isolated the sapphire. I pulled it slowly up through the layers of my skin. As its blue took my eyes, I thought of the many veins of hornblende scattered throughout the mountains, and I remembered Fate’s words: the only shield needed against the hornblende is you.
It flowed through veins. It lived in tissue, organs, and bone. It kept me alive. Water.
If my elemental ancestors used the water in their bodies against the hornblende’s twisting nature, as an erudite, I could too. I just had to want it. And not kill myself in the process.
I stilled my thoughts. I centered first on all the places water resided within me. Then I visualized those same places as connected, with the precious liquid as a single, continuous, unbreakable force surging throughout. Water cradled my soul and my magic. It nourished my body and mind. Gentle, yet fierce, it fortified me, strengthened me. Protected me.
Feeling water’s might wrapping in and around me like a heavy mantle, I envisioned what lie on the other end of the plateau—the keep, the slippery terrain, the moisture falling from the sky; our enemies slogging through the blood-soaked muck, struggling for purchase as they chased after Malaq’s retreating men. With the eldring’s senses I distinguished the splash of their boots. I smelled the mixed aromas of my father’s city on their clothes and fur.
I released a portion of the sapphire. The twisting strand sunk into the slush and expanded. Sliding into puddles, permeating the individual drops. Some moved forward. As the rest lifted into the air, I pictured the rain hammering down. The ground consuming, drinking until it was bloated and gorged. Unable to ingest another drop, the moisture would build and rise. It would surge across the rocky plateau at a rapid pace, seizing our enemies that stood upon it. The flow would move away from the keep, traveling to the edge where I stood. The rain falling harder, the stream ever rising, it would rush; an unstoppable wall of water and bodies would burst over the edge of the slope.
Not even the valley below could hold its might.
Clinging to my wish and my internal shield, I released the remaining magic. Its escape from my veins was slow and sensual, like a lover sliding from a warm embrace. The bits of grass poking through the snow—a mixture of last years’ hearty stalks and a smattering of early spring growth—curled and blackened in a widening circle around me.
The death continued on as I fell to my knees. Magic-blind, I was barely aware of the rain I’d summoned pounding down like the gods had broken a dam above my head. It was only as the enjoyable sensations waned, did the others take over. I couldn’t fight them. In my vulnerable, weakened state, I couldn’t resist the pull of the eldring mind. I tumbled into it.
And I felt them all.
The packs here on the mountain; feasting upon the battlefield remains, struggling to slake their unremitting thirst. The hundreds at the harbor, squeezed into pens so tight they could barely draw breath, sleeping in piles of their own excrement in the bottom of Draken’s ships. In Ru Jaar’leth the eldring were in the midst of training. The whips of punishment striking against their hide reverberated across their shared memory. The pain of watching mates and offspring being beaten for their resistance cut just as deep. Starvation left them weak and desperate. Br
oken.
Inundated with the sensations that layered their memories, I couldn’t distinguish one eldring from another. It was easier to ‘see’ where large concentrations of the beasts were scattered across Mirra’kelan. There were undiscovered clusters that had somehow avoided capture by either tyrant seeking to use them. Those traveling with Draken’s patrols were strung across the isolated areas of Rella and Kael, so far out, their Langorian owners had no idea what was happening back home. My father’s patrols had the same purpose, to subdue possible dissenters to his spreading reign. To accomplish this, the beasts had been made into ravenous curs, driven by the fear of starvation.
Like the ones currently storming Kabri.
I sucked in a breath. No…
I tried to leave then, but their minds were a blaring chaos of screams. Blood splattered the castle walls and sat warm upon their chins. Nostrils twisting, they followed the fear scent; claws clicking over the stone floor as they gave chase.
Prey was down in a single leap. Fabric ripped and darkened. Supple skin surrendered and gave way. Bones resisted longer, but only a moment. Organs popped like egg shells. Their contents ran, gathering in the ruts of burrowing claws, wetting dry throats.
From the floors above came the echo of a baby’s cry.
Releasing a scream of effort, I hauled myself out of the eldring hive mind and back into my own. I had no idea how long I’d been gone. Shivering and soaked, my thoughts were spinning. I couldn’t remember anything after discharging the sapphire. Events faded beneath the blare of life returning to frozen limbs and overloaded senses. Focus drifted. Vision blurred. It was a complete disorientation made worse by the roaring noise of what my spell had wrought.
I’d turned the plateau into a raging river. The mountain edge where I sat: a waterfall. The grouping of rocks I’d been perched on was at my back. I must have fallen off, and the force of the water pushed me up against their face. My right leg was wedged in a gap below the murky surface. I could free it if I tried, but the rock’s hold was my savior. It alone had kept me from being swept up by the torrent and becoming part of the discolored soup of debris rushing over and past me. Wood, clothing and metal, discarded weapons, severed limbs, broken bodies, swollen and bloodless bobbed on top of the waves. By my command, Jem’s forces had been sucked into the current. But not all were dead. The living called out as they rushed by. They were magically conditioned to ignore the horrors of battle, but this wasn’t battle. My flood was an unexpected terror, something outside Jem’s parameters.
Their fear was bleeding through my father’s spell.
I couldn’t help them, though. I hadn’t broken his hold. I couldn’t until I knew what fueled Jem’s compulsion. And they were moving too fast. Even if I managed to grab on, my slippery grip wouldn’t hold for long. If it did, their weight combined with the current, would tug my leg free and pull me over the ledge right along with them. So I did the only thing I could. I strained to keep my head above the rising tainted water, and tried not to hear their screams as they fell.
Ice had formed on the heels of the receding water. I was fairly certain ice had formed on me, but the warmth of Dolan’s pelt had thawed me and stopped my shivering. He didn’t seem to miss the extra layer. The big man wasn’t even out of breath as we jogged along the flood-ravaged plateau back to the keep.
I glanced at Jarryd on the other side of me. He was wearing a lot of blood, but only a few minor scratches. My stare turned harder as it shifted to Dolan. “What happened to guarding Malaq?”
“I tried, Shinree, but the King insisted he had enough protection. Instead, he set me on the task of ‘retrieving your foolish ass’.” Dolan shot me a grin. “His words, not mine.”
“There was no arguing with him, Ian,” Jarryd offered.
I shook my head. “There never is.”
Lapsing back into silence, we continued our hurried trek. It wasn’t a pleasant run. Dolan had likened me to a drowned kitten when they found me and had kindly offered to carry my weapons. It was a nice gesture, but the lack of weight didn’t make walking any easier. Most of the topsoil had been washed away by my spell and the exposed rock was coated in icy peaks and furrows, as if the waves of my flood had frozen in place. Pieces broke off beneath our boots and sent our steps askew. Though no bodies obstructed our path, the air still stank of death. We were anxious to be out of it.
Yet our pace felt frantic for other reasons.
What those reasons might be struck the last bits of fog from my mind. “What’s going on?”
“It’s Malaq,” Jarryd said. “He was damn pissed when we left. Do you really think Elek was trying to kill him?”
“I think if it happened Elek wouldn’t be upset. But the way he speaks of Arullan superiority, he doesn’t want Malaq’s throne. He would see ruling Mirra’kelan as beneath him.”
“So what?” he asked. “Elek’s just another narcissistic prick vying for attention? Because we have plenty of experience with those.”
Dolan chuckled under his breath. “If only you were this funny in the forge, Kane. Might have made the days go faster.”
Jarryd grunted. “Oh, I was funny. You just couldn’t hear me way up in that cage.”
As the two men shared a grim laugh, I realized it never occurred to me they might have known each other in prison. I’d certainly never imagined Jarryd laughing about his time in the cage. Maybe killing Draken really was the closure he needed. If that was true, regardless of how he’d changed, I knew Jarryd’s soul. The brutal act may have seemed like vengeance, but to bring him peace, in his heart, Jarryd believed it was justice.
The absence of his presence suddenly gnawing at me, I destroyed the barrier between us. Jarryd’s recollections of the battle charged in. He was hungry and fatigued. His muscles were pulled. Otherwise, he was well, and I was happy to regain my sense of him. It reset my internal balance, lending me strength beyond the physical. My stamina improved with each step.
We neared the keep and the remains of Elek’s war machines became visible. Scattered about, half-buried in the muck my flood created, their wheels were busted. The metal was dented and snapped. I counted three of the man-built beasts lying on their sides. But though Dolan and my flood had done a decent job, this wasn’t all of them. I’d spied ten from the battlements.
Eyeing the multitude of craters pockmarking the ground, I envisioned what the plateau would look like if Elek had unleashed them all. There’d be nothing left.
The men on the wall noted our approach. A call was sent out to echo down the line. Nestled inside their stone shelter with nothing but arrow notches for windows, the bridge guards jumped quickly to action. Chain rattled and metal grated as they lowered the great steel-enforced wooden slab over the moat. It connected with a ground-shaking thud, granting us passage over the wide strip of green water, and access to the intimidating stone wall.
A thing to behold, the wall spanned a great height. Constructed by the meticulous placement of boulders large enough to put Elek’s machines to shame, the wall’s assembly was the work of magic. Only talented elementals could have lifted, and perfectly positioned, such immense weight. Yet hornblende had plagued the erecting of the keep and its wall. Legend said many lives were lost, slaves and Shinree alike; crushed to a pulp, as the great stones went inexplicably astray.
Stone plated with armor and etched with Langor’s serpent symbol, the gate slid apart with a pulley system similar to the one Krillos, Liel, and I found in the old mining tunnel when we snuck in to rescue Jarryd. Thankfully, this one appeared far less ancient.
As we walked the bridge, the guards beyond the wall turned the wheel to open the gate. I didn’t like the sound of the gears. Each rotation gave off an eerie grinding reminiscent to a woman’s high-pitched scream.
Or a baby’s cry.
I lurched to a halt. The eldring memories rushed back.
Latching onto Jarryd with
a fierce grip, I ushered him through the gate. “You need to get home—now.”
FORTY FIVE
The front courtyard of Darkhorne was the largest of all the realms. Kabri’s was hindered by the slope of the island. Kael’s was broken down into an inner and outer courtyard that, combined, didn’t equal what was owned by the Langorian King. The huge, flat, stone-covered expanse, with its own interior moat winding close around half the keep, was nearly as great as the open plateau. It still wasn’t room enough for Malaq’s forces. The crammed in, overworked and exhausted men were flopped on the ground, nursing wounds or wolfing down a meal. Tents occupied the left side of the yard. The colored fabric of various homelands grouped together would have been more inspiring if they weren’t serving as shelter for the wounded.
Elek was just inside the gate. His remaining machines, in a line behind him, were taking up a good amount of space. His warriors were on attention, guarding their metal devices with weapons drawn. The size of the machines, coupled with the line of warriors, blocked the view of those behind. Only a handful of Rellans—being held back by Arullan steel—had a clear view enough to notice Elek’s blade was out and aimed at the High King.
Malaq’s hands were up, as if trying to calm Elek and keep the moment from escalating. Ordree stood nearby, with her quiver empty and her bow slung over her shoulder. The Arullan woman’s pretty face was ripe with dismay as she listened to the two leaders quarrel.
As we approached, Elek’s sword flashed. Ordree moved fast to shoulder Malaq clear and the blade ripped across her thigh. Uniform and skin split. Ordree collapsed, and Jarryd’s pulse spiked. Adrenaline and anger clouded the link.
“See to her,” I told him. “I’ll take care of Elek.”
Dolan moved in. “You’ll need these.” My weapons were tucked into the straps crisscrossing his back. He slid the blades out. “Feel good enough to use them?”
The Crown of Stones: Magic-Borne Page 38