“Dehilasü baeos!” he cried again, and the cry was stronger. Some heard the hint of Telm’s own death-cry, the force of which had banished Agon to the Underworld. “Begone!”
Together the two Ilokrán were like the twin lights of the sun and the moon. Geldirana’s golden hair sparkled and billowed, and about Ifferon shone the shimmering white armour of Telm. To the Molokrán it almost seemed as though Ilios and Uldarus were before them, gleaming yellow and white.
But though the sun and moon brighten the day and the night, the darkness still survives their light, hiding in the crags and hollows of the ground, and in the crags of hollows of people’s hearts.
“Your friend is dead,” the Alar Molokrán said with satisfaction. “Nature answers to the shadow.”
Some of the Al-Ferian guards cried out. Some cursed the darkness, and some prayed to Éala that Rúathar’s tree might grow strong. Some of those who cowered now came out from their hiding places to avenge their fallen leader.
But the Molokrán could not be vanquished so easily. The Al-Ferian who charged towards them were thrown back, and some were even thrown over the edge of the mountain. One of the guards struck Geldirana and Ifferon, knocking them to the ground and knocking the Ilokrán from their hands.
Then the Alar Molokrán drew up tall and settled his intent gaze upon Théos upon the stone table, and they saw also the Wisdomweavers who tried to continue the ritual despite their mounting fear. To the Molokrán it seemed that the boy was laid out in feast—and they were hungry.
Then Délin Trueblade stepped before them.
Though he could not see it, Délin could gauge where the shadow stood, and could feel its imposing presence, like a tall dark tower upon a pale mountain. “Lamarin!” he cried, and he charged towards the shadow. “For the Lady!” His footfalls were like thunder, and his two-handed sword was like lightning, slashing this way and that, and flashing in the gloaming. He sliced through the darkness, and there was a deathly wail upon the wind; the Molokrán could not die, perhaps, but they could still feel the knight’s wrath, could still feel the pain that he could inflict.
But the pain only kindled their own wrath, and they seized him and threw him, as if he were not a tall, broad knight in heavy plate armour, but a small rag doll cast aside by a child. He crashed against one of the pillars on the eastern side of the courtyard, and there was a clamorous clang as his armour struck the ground. He groaned from the pain and rolled onto his back.
Then they lunged upon him.
In a flurry and frenzy, he felt the darkness take hold of him with whatever claws or hands they formed from the shade. It felt like many probing fingers, long and sharp and icy cold. He could see nothing but a shimmer, as if the very clouds above him were assaulting him from the sky. He felt like he was being mauled by the Felokar wolves of the Morbid Mountains, but this was worse, for fell though those beasts were, the Molokrán were like death itself, and their touch was not warm, but a type of cold that he knew would forever haunt his bones. He struggled and fought, though he was bruised and battered, and he felt the darkness begin to swallow him, and the fires of his struggle begin to wane. Death was coming.
In those agonising moments it seemed that none would come for him, that he was alone with the shadow, waiting for the inevitable, and that he would not live, and would not see Théos live again. This, he thought, was his greatest sorrow, his greatest regret, and he would have died happy if he had been there for that, if his faith in the world had been restored.
But the end did not yet come, for Ifferon, attired in the shimmering armour of Telm, seized the shadow that had seized Délin, and the Molokrán knew then why Telm was once called the Lighthand, for as their hands froze, so did his hands burn, like light scalds the shadow. They winced and recoiled, and they turned to Ifferon in shock, as if Telm really had returned. For a moment it seemed that they did not know what to do, to attack or flee, or to attempt to resume their onslaught against the knight, that the Trueblade, at least, would never be a threat again. Suddenly then they launched towards Ifferon, but this time he surprised even himself, for he parried their blows. A glimmering light surrounded the Ilokrán in his hand, larger than the shape of the Shadowstone, as if indeed it had turned into the fabled shield that Telm bore to battle. The Molokrán’s frenzied blows bounced off it, and Ifferon lunged the Scroll towards them like the sharpened edge of Daradag.
“Dehilasü baeos!” he bellowed.
The shadow backed away, like they had done when they confronted Telm a thousand years before, and Ifferon for once did not feel fear or doubt, for he felt powerful.
But the Molokrán were not brute servants of evil, but a greater type of evil that is devious and cunning. While they feigned fear before Ifferon, allowing him his moment of prideful triumph, the Alar Molokrán was using his power over nature, seizing and summoning many evil birds that circled the area, calling them to the Mountain Fortress like a Magus calls the rain.
In moments the evil fowl were upon them, dark of wing and red of eye. They paid no heed to the glimmering armour of Telm, for their talons scratched and their beaks shredded. Ifferon fell to the ground, shielding his face, and his hands were scraped and clawed. Then more birds came, until all who stood against the Molokrán now fought their evil pets. Al-Ferian guards swiped at them with their staves, Geldirana swung at them with her mace, Thalla scalded them with her hands of fire, and Délin batted them aside as he raced to Théos to shield him from the flurry. Ifferon was overcome by them and could do naught but curl into a ball and cower.
Then more birds joined the fray, and Ifferon thought it would be the end of them, ruined by nature, but these fowl were called by Thúalim, returning to the Mountain Fortress from the assault upon the siege engines in the valley bellow. They were fairer in colour and brighter in eye, but their talons were still strong, and their beaks were still sharp. Suddenly they came upon the other birds like a whirlwind, and they knew them as traitors and turncoats, forgoing the old oaths and bowing down to a master that was not the sky, but the shadows of the earth. The tumult was deafening. The turmoil was harrowing. In those moments the guards did not know who or what to swing for, and anyone who was not scratched by birds, evil and good, was struck by dead ones that fell like a hailstorm.
Amidst the furore, the Molokrán stalked the courtyard, and even Ifferon could barely see them, for black, brown and grey feathers fluttered before his eyes, a tornado of plumage. As he clambered to his feet, he realised that the armour of Telm was no longer around him, and that the Ilokrán and Scroll had been knocked from his hands, his weapons cast aside in the fray. Through the frenzy, the Molokrán hunted him. A Child of Telm, not Telm himself; just another man, not a Céalar.
He knew it—and the Molokrán knew it as well.
Ifferon searched about for the Ilokrán and the Scroll, his only weapons. He could barely see anyone or anything around him in the thick of the battle, and so he ducked from the chaos of beak and talon, bowing low to the ground to escape the bloodshed up above. Yet the blood dripped upon him, and the bodies of friendly and evil birds fell together, some landing around him and some upon him. Through this he crawled along the ground, as the Molokrán crawled along behind him.
Up ahead, near the eastern side of the courtyard, which looked out into the misty valley below, Ifferon saw both the Ilokrán, resting in a pile of other stones, and the Scroll, lodged in a crevice dangerously close to an opening that dropped down off the mountain. He hurried towards them, even as the shadow hurried after him.
In an agonising moment he reached his hand to the Ilokrán, and his fingers failed to grasp it. He reached again as the great shadow of the Molokrán cast its own shadow upon him, and he seized it just in time. He turned, holding it out to the darkness, piercing it with the light of Telm the Lighthand. There was a shriek, and several birds were felled from the noise, as if it were a vocal venom. The shadow backed away.
Ifferon reached out his other hand to the Scroll, and the tips of hi
s fingers grazed the burnt edges of the parchment. He extended his arm again, but this time he only pushed the Scroll further away, dislodging it from the rubble that held it in place, freeing it for the wind, which did what he could not, seizing it and taking it, and carrying it through the few remaining birds, where it might be shredded in the bitter pecking and scratching.
Before Ifferon could see what had become of it, the Molokrán drew near once more, and now there were few to oppose them, for all allies were battered and bloodied by the birds.
“Telm has but one gift to give,” the Alar Molokrán said with a sigh. “Death. He perished, and you carry his blood, which shall also perish, for death is his heirloom, and the living are the heirs. Claim now your birthright.”
He drew close, closer than the Ilokrán should have allowed, if it were more than just a Lesser Shadowstone, and Ifferon felt the cold breath upon his face, if it were truly air and not the noxious fumes of the dead. He felt the cold begin to travel through him like a serpent inside his bowels, and he thought that he would join the lifeless.
But Geldirana lit up like a beacon, like she had done back at Nahragor, and like Rúathar had done before his death in the forest. Thus the Molokrán were drawn to her, as darkness is always fascinated by the light. They abandoned Ifferon, who had almost abandoned hope, and they drifted towards the Garigút woman like a ship drifts toward a lighthouse—and towards the dangerous rocks.
Geldirana held her mace to the sky, and a bolt of lightning flashed down towards it and out at the Molokrán. It was not the working of Thúalim, but it angered the shadow all the same. The Molokrán darted forth and struck Geldirana, throwing her back into a group of Al-Ferian soldiers, who collapsed from the blow. Ifferon leapt to his feet and lashed out at the shadow, but he too was cast back, and he struck the stone bed upon which Théos lay, and upon which the Ferhassan stood precariously close to the edge.
The Ferhassan toppled over. In those tiny moments, where time slowed as if Chránán himself had stepped upon the earth, many faces contorted in panic, many guards ran towards the falling box, and Délin leapt to the ground to catch it. It struck the index finger of the knight’s right hand, and he tried to grab it, but it slipped further and smashed upon the floor. Pieces of the wood flung in all directions, and one was thrown towards the Alar Molokrán. It struck the shadow like a boulder from a catapult, for the shadow was pushed back. The sheer power of the tree’s memories, of the presence of the Elad Éni in the Time Before Time, made the shadow realise that there was something worse than darkness, and it was the nothingness of the Void.
The Molokrán withdrew, as they had done when Théos first revealed himself not only as a Child of Telm, but as Corrias Incarnate. Everything was a flutter of shadow as they fled, and to those who could see the Shadowspirits, they saw them plummeting over the edge of the mountain, into the pockets of fog that still dappled the landscape around. For a moment the fear remained, until that too was cast into the valley below.
Délin sat upon the ground, holding the shards of the Ferhassan in his hands. He looked up, and sorrow was in one eye, anger in the other. Those eyes were like the moon and the sun, Uldarus and Ilios, united together in their melancholy. Everyone in the courtyard of the Mountain Fortress felt this same misery, for if Uldarus brightened the night and Ilios illuminated the day, together they shone on all. The light revealed the darkness more clearly.
“So much for our attempt to control fate,” Ifferon said as he clambered up, rubbing his bruised back. “It is in vain.”
“It seems like every effort we make turns against us,” Thalla said.
“Perhaps,” Délin said, and he stirred from the ground. “But I will not give up hope. Had Rúathar not constructed this Ferhassan, then its destruction would not have frightened off the Molokrán. It would have been our destruction then.”
“But maybe it has only delayed our destruction,” Thalla said.
“Long enough for us to fight,” Délin replied. He hauled himself to his feet, using the stone bed for support, and he placed the shards of the Ferhassan upon it, around the body of Théos like token offerings to the gods. “Lamar í Lamon.”
“What then do we do?” Ifferon asked.
“We continue to defend the boy,” Geldirana said as she rejoined them, brushing dust and dirt from her clothes. “I would not have Rúathar die in vain, nor any of the people of Iraldas. The Molokrán are gone for now, and hopefully the Ferhassan fragments will bide us the time we need, but I harried only a handful of the Nahamoni in the fields below. Many yet live, and now that the Mountain Fortress is no longer bombarded, I think it rather telling.”
“They are coming this way,” Ifferon said as he realised her train of thought.
“Yes, and we best be ready for them, for no relics of the gods will scare off mortal men.” She turned and surveyed the aftermath. “Why are there so few Al-Ferian here?”
“They are in hiding,” Thúalim said.
“Hiding?” she asked in disgust. “Who hides from the enemy at the door?”
“The women and children.”
“So they can die more easily once the fighters are dead?”
“We are not all like the Garigút,” Thúalim said, and he looked from Geldirana to Ilokana and the other older men and women who had survived the siege of Nahragor. Ifferon noted the stern glares and grim faces that looked back at him.
“We have a handful here,” Geldirana said. “Look out on the plains below, and look further to the hosts that emerge from the forests, bolstered constantly by a great army marching from Nahlin. We need every able body, and that is a body that can swing a sword, axe or mace, to come out here and help us fight for everyone in this world.”
Ifferon knew that Rúathar would not have obliged, but Thúalim was more reckless a leader than he, and he seemed to understand the need for warriors of any kind, even if they would end up as mere distractions, or a shield of flesh for the more battle-hardened troops. Ifferon was concerned for the people of Alimror, but he was also concerned for himself, and if he were offered a place in the bunkers instead of some other weak fool, he thought it likely that he would take it, and all the guilt that came with such a cowardly position.
Thúalim ordered the guards to open the bunkers and bring out the strongest of the people there, many of whom were very old, or very young. Only the oldest, whose skin had turned almost like bark, and so begun their transformation into trees a little early, were left behind with the younger children, but anyone over the age of twelve, or who just looked older, was hauled out of the safety of the bunkers and given a weapon.
“I want to fight!” Affon called as she was pushed back into her bunker. “Let me fight,” she screamed, and she fought the guards, kicking and biting them, to prove her point.
“Let her fight,” Geldirana said, and Ifferon recalled how Geldirana had told him that she started fighting almost since the day she was born, that she was not nursed and waited on like the pampered children of the settled Bororians, nor the even more pampered children of the royal house. She was left with another group of children at the age of five to fend for themselves in the Loftwood Forest, where they had to learn to hunt or die. Of the ten children left there, only three had survived. Geldirana was one of them. Two boys had also lived, but one of them had survived by scavenging scraps from the others, and when the elders heard of this they took him far into the mountains and left him there alone, where heat could not be scavenged in the cold of night. Geldirana did not know what had happened to him, only that his name was Ralon, and that he most likely died. All that mattered to her was that she had lived.
“Everyone who wants to fight should fight,” Geldirana said.
“No,” Thúalim replied. “She is a child.”
“That will not stop the Nahamoni from killing her if we die and there are none left to defend the bunkers.”
“She is a Child of Telm,” Thúalim said.
Geldirana pointed towards the body of Théos.
“So was he,” she said. “It means nothing to have the blood of the Warrior-king if you are not a warrior.” She glanced at Ifferon, and he felt her admonishing gaze.
“I will not allow it,” the Al-Ferian said, and he ushered the guards to close the doors. Affon was pushed back, still kicking and screaming, and the metal doors were slammed tight. The guards heaved great stones upon them, so that a searching enemy would not so easily find the entrances, for the stones looked like natural formations of the mountain, aided by the magic of Thúalim.
* * *
Ifferon suddenly realised that he had not sought the Scroll, that the chaos had forced it from his mind, like Agon would have it done. Foolish, he thought.
His eyes wandered across the courtyard, where the Al-Ferian were taking away the carcasses of birds and cleaning up the blood that seeped into the stone. He knew they would not discard the Scroll, but he hoped it was not splattered red, for many of the words were already illegible around the charred edges.
Then he spotted it.
A large crow, black and dappled red, stood on the edge of an opening in the fortress walls, perched on the window sill with the Scroll unfurled before it, part of it wedged between its beak, the rest billowing like a flag.
Ifferon froze, for he thought movement might frighten the bird away. Then he realised by its cruel glare that it was looking straight at him, with mockery in its eyes. It had sat there through their discussions and their planning, listening carefully and watching all of them, judging their strength. It sat there with the Scroll, waiting for Ifferon to realise it was still missing, so that he could see it being taken away.
“The Scroll,” Ifferon whispered to the others. Some ignored him, but Délin and Geldirana looked up, their eyes alert. They looked to Ifferon and then to where he was staring, and they saw in horror that one of the evil birds had survived, and that it had taken a valuable token from the battle.
The Children of Telm - The Complete Epic Fantasy Trilogy Page 52