“Sorry, I...” he hesitated, then frowned. “I can’t imagine a life like yours.”
“What do you mean?” She took another step back.
Rivan shrugged, dusting the earth from his hair. “Always having to be so cautious, even of a helping hand.”
“A mere touch can drive a man insane,” she quoted.
“That explains what happened to Marsais and Oenghus, I suppose.” A smile cracked her lips, which Rivan returned. He moved to the front, drawing his sword.
“Stay behind us,” she said to Elam.
The air soon turned dry, but time held little meaning underground. Isiilde could not say if they had walked a mile or ten. But eventually, the passage widened. Creatures skittered across the ground with clicking steps, diving into cracks. Dust gave way to sand, and the tunnel opened to a chamber. Pillars lay toppled, etched with scenes of pain and horror.
Isiilde did not study them overly long. The carvings made her shiver.
Rivan stopped, and she peeked around his body. There was light ahead—a dim slash of sunlight that illuminated the chamber floor. The ground moved. A writhing mass of bodies slithered over the stone, all scaled and sand-colored with little horns on top of their flat heads. Snakes.
The paladin took a step back, and Elam sucked in a breath, drawing his knife.
“Are you afraid of snakes?” she whispered.
“Everything in Fomorri is poisonous,” Rivan explained.
Isiilde looked at the writhing floor. Scorpions and centipedes crawled over the mass, all looking as though they were hurrying away on an errand. It reminded her of the Wise One’s castle. She glanced around the stone room. With a quirk of lips, she whispered to her flame, humming softly as she formed it into an orb.
Rivan’s eyes widened, and he pulled Elam back into the tunnel. When flame roiled between her hands, she whispered her desire. Fire roared with her breath, washing over the floor. It ripped a path through the snakes, parting them like water.
Isiilde’s breath caught, her heart leapt, and she could have watched her fire dance over the creatures all day long. The crackle and hiss, the softly licking flame over flesh hypnotized the nymph.
Rivan and Elam raced through the path of flame. After they reached the other side, Isiilde remembered her purpose. With a sigh, she followed, brushing tendrils of fire with her fingertips like a farmer over his wheat.
Stones and sand spilled down the wide stairs, but there was a crack above, one that let in a line of blinding sun. Isiilde scampered over the ruin, and squeezed through a narrow opening. Sunlight greeted her and she breathed in heat, wanting to strip down and bask under its blissful touch.
If not for her surroundings, the nymph might have. A city of ruin sweltered under the sun. Its stones were bleached white with time, and seemed to be melting into the sands.
Elam shielded his eyes from the brightness, and said something in his lilting tongue that she did not understand. But from his tone the meaning was clear.
“I don’t know where we are,” she admitted. One direction looked the same as the next.
Rivan fought and squeezed through the opening, and when the stone released him, he stumbled forward, thudding on the sand. The paladin winced, then climbed to his feet with sword in hand.
“Do you know what side of the cliff we’re on?” Rivan whispered, blinking against the sunlight.
Unaffected by the brightness, Isiilde climbed a stone wall, and balanced out onto a tilted pillar. She frowned, searching. “I don’t even see the sea.” She blew out a breath, trying not to think of her father and Marsais.
Elam pointed to a taller ruin in the distance.
“Good idea,” she said, summoning a flame. It leapt to her palm, and danced under the blistering sun with relish. It wanted to grow, it wanted to burn, but she shushed it with a whisper. This time, when she bound air to its dance, the flame remained without her voice.
“How do you do that?”
“What?”
“Are you talking with the fire?”
“I suppose.” She hopped down.
“You don’t know?” Rivan asked.
Isiilde cocked her head. “Do you know how you breathe?”
Rivan opened his mouth to reply, but stopped. He frowned in thought. “It’s that easy?”
“Now it is.”
As they walked towards the toppled ruin, Isiilde kept her orb of flame at the ready. She had very little experience with ruins, but what she had learned in the months of travel was that things usually lurked. Very unpleasant things.
The ruins opened to a raised dais. A greenish statue lay toppled in the middle. It looked like a bull, but larger: an Auroch. Underneath, the stone was cracked and covered in sand.
Drawn to the metal husk, Isiilde stepped onto the dais. The statue lay on its side. She touched the statue’s horns, running her fingers over the corroded copper. Its nostrils and mouth were hollow, and it smelled of char and cooked flesh. A hatch lay open and gaping on its side like a dark portal into its belly.
Isiilde shuddered and stepped back, hastening across the dais to the other side. Without waiting for the others, she climbed up a partially-intact wall.
Remembering her bright hair, she pulled her hood farther forward, and crouched at the top of the perch, surveying the land. A city had stood here at one time, but most of it had long been buried in sand. To the west, the stones stopped suddenly, and although she could not see the chasm, she was sure that the cliffs were there. She looked east. Sand-colored rock wavered beneath the sun, and to the northeast, a distant mountain range rose starkly towards the sky. The land reminded her of a worn painting.
Isiilde was about to whisper down to Rivan, when something caught her eye. The nymph froze. Something moved on the outskirts of the ruins, blending with the terrain. Isiilde dropped to her stomach, knocking loose sand and pebbles as she clung to the top of the wall. Slowly, she edged her way down, and joined Rivan and Elam in the shadows.
“I saw a cloaked figure, to the west, towards the cliffs.”
Rivan frowned. “Could it be one of the Elite?”
Isiilde shook her head. “I didn’t much care for the way it moved.”
Each looked at the others, hoping one would have a plan.
“Can you send a Whisper to Marsais and Oenghus?” Rivan asked.
Isiilde closed her eyes, nearly slapping her forehead. She had not thought of that. Color rose to her freckled cheeks. Angry with herself, she focused on the weave, trying to recall the flash of Marsais’ fingers. It was not an easy weave—not every Wise One could manage a Whisper.
She closed her eyes, envisioning Marsais in her mind’s eye. The image wavered, from vagrant, to gleaming hair and noble brow, to a hunched figure with grief in his heart. And finally, to his broken body in the water.
Isiilde clenched her jaw, and held on tight to the last time they had shared a bed—in Vlarthane. His eyes had danced, his body glistened, and he had been as warm as any sun. Summoning the Lore with a lilting touch, she traced the spirit rune, spoke his name, and bound the whisper to air. But instead of narrowing in focus, it unraveled, blossoming into an explosion. A single word snapped in the air like thunder: Marsais?
Rivan flinched.
“At least we didn’t explode,” she said with a grimace. She glanced west, into the maze of stone, and Rivan hissed at her to move. The three ducked into a doorway of a half-toppled ruin.
Sand swirled in the air, and as they moved into the shadows by the door, she breathed it in and sneezed. A puff of fire shot out her ears. She clamped a hand over her nose. The next two sneezes were silent, but the fire still came.
Elam batted at his singed hair and a scorpion skittered under a fallen rock.
Cursing her very nature, she shifted positions, pressing her eye to a crack in the stone. A noise caught her attention, a soft scuffing sound. Her ears twitched, and she glanced at Rivan. His sword shook in his hand.
The crunch and scuff of careful boots gre
w louder. The sound moved around back, towards the crumbled wall. Rivan’s gaze darted to the exposed side.
Should they run?
Isiilde bit her lip. Footprints. It wouldn’t take a skilled tracker to notice their bootprints in the sand. A sudden thought flared in her mind. She dragged Rivan and Elam back, giving him a warning look as she summoned the Lore. She glanced at the stone wall behind them, holding it firmly in her mind. Her fingers moved quickly, nowhere as fast as Marsais, but where she failed, her whispering voice compensated, skillfully weaving what her fingers could not. Fire around stone, adding water to the wispy threads, then a pinch of spirit to draw the image from her mind. With a final breath, she bound the image to all three of them, and pressed Rivan and Elam against the wall.
A boy’s gasp rose from the stones. She smiled at Elam, but he could not see her, and she could not see him; they looked like stone. Her mirror weave reflected the wall at their backs.
Another thought kicked her dull wits. The Whisper—she should have drawn out the image with the spirit rune. No wonder the message had had nowhere to go. Isiilde suppressed a sigh.
Light shifted outside the doorway. She held her breath, and hoped Rivan would have the sense to do the same. The boy’s hand clutched her own tightly, and he was as still as the stone they resembled.
The soft scuff of boots over sand drew her attention. A figure appeared on the half-tumbled wall. Sand-colored cloth covered him from head to toe. He clutched a curved sword, its metal notched and dented, but the edge looked sharp.
The cloaked intruder hopped onto the sandy floor and moved into the small ruin. The man sniffed the air, and eyes flashed behind his veil. As he edged farther into the building, maggots fell from the folds of his cloak. A Fomorri.
Time stretched, and she pressed her lips together, stilling her heart.
The Fomorri looked directly at the trio.
A guttural voice called from the outside, catching the man’s attention. He hesitated, swept his gaze over the shadows once more, and stalked out, leaving them shaking in the ruin.
Time was measured in heartbeats as the soft hiss of footsteps faded. No one dared move; not at first.
A swirl of sand tickled Isiilde’s nose. She squeezed her eyes shut until tears came. It was useless. She sneezed. Her head hit the stone, fire burst from her ears, and the illusion unraveled.
Rivan patted out the fire on his arm, and Elam crept towards the doorway, peeking out. The boy glanced over his shoulder and flashed a crude gesture that he had learned from Oenghus. Isiilde assumed it was all clear.
Rivan moved to the crumbled wall and peered over. Another shake of his head. “That was close,” he whispered. “But there might be more on the way.”
The three put their backs to stone, keeping an eye on the slash of sunlight, but nothing moved, and the only sound was the distant ocean and the lone screech of a bird.
Isiilde eyed the small, squirming white maggots burrowing aimlessly on the ground. With disgust, she kicked sand over the larvae. Legend claimed the Fomorri were formed from the maggots of the dead. Before today, she had always doubted that claim.
“We need to leave,” she said.
“But where will we go? There’s nothing in Fomorri but sand and sun.”
“We need to find the others.” If, she added silently, they are alive. She closed her eyes, summoning a vision of Marsais to mind. Her heart twisted, but she pushed down emotion, focusing on the weave. She traced an air rune in front of her vision. It drifted, ethereal and wavering, like a wisp of thread on a breeze.
“Wait—”
Isiilde shot him a glare. “Marsais, where are you?” she whispered into the rune. This time, instead of binding the Whisper to air, she traced a spirit rune, drew the vision of Marsais from her mind, as she had done with the illusion, and bound the trio together. The weave shot off with a puff of air.
Rivan clutched his sword, waiting. When her question did not crack in the ruin, she relaxed, and so did the paladin. The nymph straightened, feeling accomplished. She repeated a Whisper for Oenghus, knowing that he had no way to answer. He could not weave a Whisper in return, so she simply told him that she was alive and well, and not alone.
She edged to the doorway, pressed her back to the stone, and peeked into the bright day. From here, the bronze bull was visible. “I suppose we should scout.”
“And if we’re discovered?” Rivan asked.
“We’ll have to be very quiet.”
Elam nodded, and spoke in hushed tones. He sounded like a bird, but the gist of his words got through as he pointed at himself, and mimed walking over the sand with two fingers.
“I don’t think that’s a good...” The boy zipped out the doorway. “...idea,” Rivan finished with a sigh. He made to follow, but Isiilde grabbed his arm.
“Elam grew up in the Vaylin wilds. He knows what he’s doing.” She hoped so, at any rate.
Paladin and nymph both waited for the boy to return. And for a Whisper from Marsais. It seemed like an eternity. To keep worry at bay, she examined an intact wall. Some of the stone ruin appeared to have been scorched, as if by fire, while other parts were marred by deep ruts. Whatever creature had made those marks was massive. Isiilde hoped it was far away.
Movement brought her around. Elam slipped in through the broken wall, hopping onto the sandy floor. He held up seven fingers, then drew an odd shape in the sand. Some long-legged, long-necked form with a big hump on its back.
Isiilde’s eyes widened. “A Voidspawn?”
Rivan looked at the nymph. “You really don’t get out much, do you?”
She gaped. Then anger bubbled up, standing her ears on end. The paladin took a step back. “It’s a camel,” he explained.
“Oh.”
Elam held up two fingers.
“Two camels.” Rivan looked thoughtful.
“Are they dangerous?” Isiilde asked.
“No more than a horse, but they are extremely useful, especially in deserts.”
“I’ve only ever seen a drawing of one,” she admitted. Isiilde looked at the fallen statue of the bull. Hideously bloated, tarnished and tainted with the lives that it had taken. “How useful are the camels?”
“A matter of life and death in a desert, but we don’t stand a chance against seven Fomorri.”
“Don’t worry, I have a plan.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Marsais, where are you?
That was an excellent question. The Whisper had roused him. His head still throbbed, and the light still hurt. Marsais coughed into the sand, and squinted. Ah, yes, he thought, the Leviathan.
Movement caught his eye. He shifted, and the world lurched. Fighting down nausea, he looked past dancing spots and focused on a point near the cliffs. A boat in the water. The crew of two hugged the rock, inching towards the crescent of sand where he lay. Acacia and Lucas.
Relief swelled in his heart. The longboat was damaged, half-sinking and splintered, but it was floating. And although the paladins had lost their oars, they dragged themselves and the boat, hand over hand along the rocks.
Moving slowly, Marsais stretched his arms, sinking his fingers into the sand. As far as he was aware, he was not crushed, only pinned. He pulled, trying to wiggle out from beneath the behemoth, but the wet sand sucked at his legs, and clawing at it was about as useless as climbing water.
Spots flared, searing his eyeballs. Darkness threatened to wash over him again. He squeezed his eyes shut, and dropped his head, panting into the sand. When the realm stopped spinning, he cracked open an eye.
The boat had touched shore. Acacia carefully climbed out, eyes wide, fixed on the slumbering Leviathan’s tail. There was not much one could do against a man-eating mountain but pray and hope that it did not wake.
“Isiilde! Isiilde!” A voice boomed down the channel.
Oenghus, it appeared, was alive. For the time being. As always, the berserker seemed determined to be noticed.
The Leviathan sti
rred. Barnacles dug into Marsais’ back as the monstrosity shifted. He bit down on his arm, stifling a scream, but the tail dragged over his body. This time, he could not hold back the pain. It left his lips. And then he was being dragged, pulled by the Leviathan.
Heedless of the monster, Acacia sprinted forward, grabbed his wrists, and dug in her heels. Even when he had been half-dragged into the water, she did not let go. Something gave—a bootlace. As he broke free, Acacia tugged, and tripped over the body of an Elite warrior. She scrambled to her feet and, putting her hands under his arms, helped him find his own. The world lurched, and he nearly fell back to his knees.
As the Leviathan swam towards the booming voice, the sea retreated, exposing the beach. The sheer size of the thing controlled the tides.
Acacia put a shoulder under Marsais’ arm, and wrapped another around his waist. Together, they limped towards the waiting boat. As soon as Acacia had settled him inside the boat, she and Lucas pushed it back out into the water. Wood grated on sand and hit the water with relief. They were drifting.
His coins chimed, signaling a vision of the very near future. A familiar roar rose from the south, and when he followed the sound with his eyes, the Leviathan burst from the channel. The vision of the future, a few seconds before it happened, crumbled, but he knew that roar, and he knew his crazed berserking friend.
Without thought Marsais’ fingers flashed: stone and light and a quick bind. When Time caught up to the seer, he had the weave on his fingertips. That same roar repeated, echoing in the channel, and the behemoth burst from the sea just as he had foreseen.
Marsais thrust out his hand, hurling the weave at the creature. A burst of light smacked into its eyes. In that same instant, a man leapt from the cliff to the crown of its head. Oenghus. Confused and blinded from Marsais’ weave, the Leviathan rose, ever higher, like a cobra. When it started to fall, Oenghus leapt back onto the rock face.
“By the gods, that man is insane,” said Lucas.
“The rope,” Acacia ordered.
Her lieutenant shook himself, and tugged on a rope that dipped into the water. The slack was instantly gathered, and the boat was dragged forward at a rapid pace. As the Leviathan crashed back into the sea, a wave rose. Marsais gripped the sides of the boat, bracing himself. The wave crashed, wood splintered, and he was thrown into the water. He came up for air with a gasp.
The Broken God (Legends of Fyrsta Book 3) Page 16