“If they deceive you, then they deceive me also,” Herr’Don said.
“He is back from beyond the grave,” Ifferon whispered.
“Amidst the ranks of Shadowspirits and Taarí,” Herr’Don said. “Back from the grave, perhaps ... but he came back on the wrong side.”
XI – THE BATTLE OF WATER AND SHADE
Yavün stood beside Elilod, surveying the battlefield. They saw the armies that surrounded the Men of Arlin and Boror, and even though the gravest threat was the unseen swarm of the Shadowspirits, more eyes were set upon the evil Taarí further afield.
“They have shackled themselves to the shark,” Elilod said, “to save themselves from being eaten. But when all the other fishes are gone, and the shark is still hungry, who then will he turn to, and who then thinks that his hunger will be abated?”
“At least the waters are not all full of sharks,” Yavün said.
Elilod smiled.
“I see Ifferon,” Yavün said, pointing down towards the band of knights. “He’s in armour now.”
“Good,” Elilod said. “He will need it.”
* * *
For those entrenched in the mire of Telarym, surrounded by armies on almost every side, it seemed that armour was not enough. Dawn broke over the horizon, invading their eyes, and as much as it announced a new day, it announced a new battle. The stand-off ended, and the armies charged.
Taarí splashed down with their limbs of water, and the Shadowspirits strode forth with their limbs of shadow. The Bororians and the Knights of Issarí braced themselves, shoving halberds and spears into the heart of the angry wind.
They clashed. The strike was like a tidal wave crashing against the stubborn shore. The cries and shrieks grew high and fell, like the wall of water, until the tumult grew so loud that each cry drowned out the other, each shriek silencing the next, until the real sounds that could be heard where each soldier’s own breath, each soldier’s own grinding muscles and clattering bones, and each soldier’s own unnerving thoughts.
Though the Taarí were made of water, they could strike like land. Their weapons were as real as any other’s, and though their tendons and sinews were of another substance, they still made up a body that could hit with great ferocity. Many on both sides fell to the initial attack, and while some Men were knocked dead, some Taarí were cleaved asunder, splashing upon all around them.
The attack from the enemy was swift and unmerciful, for they too had seen the Aelora force further north, which they knew could overwhelm them if they did not destroy or rout the Bororian army. Yet they had an ally of their own in the Shadowspirits, and as much as the Aelora could blind with light, the Molokrán could blind with darkness.
For the forces of good, the reinforcements could not get there soon enough, for even as the Aelora marched towards the desperate clashes, the survivors of the Nahamoni army, which were earlier routed by the army of Boror, began to return to the battlefield, and though their numbers were much smaller now, they were more daring with the support of their allies.
So the battle continued, and those Bororian infantry who pulled back to catch a moment’s breath were hunted down by the invading shadow, until that breath was a final one. The bodies of Men formed little hills upon the flatlands, and the bodies of Taarí formed little rivers between them. Chaos and cruelty fought among them all, and they seemed to every soldier to be fighting for the opposing side.
* * *
“Here come the Taarí on our flank!” Herr’Don called to his troops. “Archers at the ready!”
Ifferon grabbed Herr’Don by the wrist before he could give the order. “But Yavün—”
“He’s one of them now,” Herr’Don said. “And maybe he was all along.”
“I do not believe it,” Ifferon said, but he doubted his own words.
“You have the clearsight,” Herr’Don said. “Look at them. See it for yourself!”
And so Ifferon looked again at the Taarí who approached from the west. They looked like any others of their race, glistening with the glint of the river, glimmering with the sheen of the sea. They marched just like those in the south-west had marched, and they carried weapons just like those who assailed them did. All that was different was the strange presence of Yavün at the front, and the standard-bearer with him, who bore the emblem of three fishes, two pointing east and one pointing west.
“They fly a different banner!” Ifferon cried.
“They can fly my own and I still will not trust them,” Herr’Don said. “Fire!”
* * *
The arrows darted forth like an army of their own, crowding together here, spreading apart there, and coming down like stabbing rain. The Rebel Taarí broke apart, some falling to the arrows, others falling in their chaotic flight from the chasing darts.
“They’re firing at us!” Yavün cried in disbelief, as if saying the words might somehow stop the truth, or bind the bows of his assailants. He crouched down and stumbled here and there, avoiding the onslaught, and he cowered beneath his sword, which was large enough that it was now his shield.
“When the waters are dark, every glimmer of light is seen as a shark,” Elilod said. He crouched also, but he did not cower or shield himself, and no arrow fell upon him, nor near him.
“But they’re friends,” Yavün said, and it was more a question than a statement. He looked down at Ifferon, who seemed confused in the heart of battle. He looked at Herr’Don, and he saw the prince turn a regiment of swordsmen towards them.
“Wave the flag!” Elilod called to the standard-bearer further up the hill. The man looked less proud now that arrows came down around him, even piercing the banner he held. He waved it now from right to left, slowly and methodically, and they hoped their attackers would realise that they were not the Taarí who submitted to Agon’s rule, but those who came here to fight him.
The arrows stopped, and the swordsmen below halted. Everyone breathed a sigh of relief, and Yavün and Elilod stood up.
Then suddenly a single arrow hurtled through and struck the standard-bearer, slicing through him and splashing out the other side. He collapsed forward, the banner falling on top of him, and sinking as the liquid of his being wept out to water the lands around.
Yavün stood in shock, but he was quickly knocked from his feet by Elilod as another arrow darted by, a bolt that would have sent him to join Melgalés in Halés.
“Retreat!” Elilod called, but many of his forces had already begun racing back up the hill, like the tide returning to the safety of the sea. Elilod dragged Yavün to his feet, and they raced back to where they had come from, hounded now not by arrows, but by the cheers and jeers of the soldiers far below.
When they were out of range of the Bororian archers, they stopped and rested, and Yavün had time to nurse his tired legs and his wounded heart. He could not believe that his friends would attack him, and he thought that Ifferon or Thalla, at least, could have stayed Herr’Don’s hand.
“They do not fire at you,” Elilod said, noticing his puzzled expression. “They fire at what crawled out of the grave to drag them into it.”
Yavün stared blankly at him.
“They think you are dead, little fish,” Elilod explained, “and that we are the enemy. There is not much we can do to make them realise the truth. We cannot get close to them without being killed.”
Then Yavün perked up, and he saw in Elilod’s eyes the wonder that was reflected in his own. “There is a way,” he said, and the tide rose once again.
* * *
The evil Taarí that crashed down on Herr’Don’s armies were fierce beyond measure, and though they were crafted of water, it seemed to some that they were made of fire. Many drowned beneath the wave of attackers, but Herr’Don worked himself into a frenzy that showed them what real fire was like. He slashed his way through the waters, attacking everything in sight, and many of his own soldiers cleared the way as he approached, for he seemed like he would strike out at anything or anyone in sight
. He was pushed to and fro, like a man bobbing amidst the waves, but this only propelled him from one dead foe to another for whom death was imminent.
And so Geldirana joined him on the field of battle, but where Herr’Don stumbled to and fro, cleaving and cutting, Geldirana’s movements were like a dance. She waded through the foes, turning this way and that, striking and continuing forth as if there were no obstacles before her, just the choreography of battle.
Elithéa too entered the battlefield, and though she did not have the grace of Geldirana, she had something of the ferocity, and her enemies were not thankful that she carried a staff instead of a mace, for it struck them dead just the same.
Thalla joined the other Magi with attacks made from range, trapping and killing reinforcements that flooded down to join their comrades.
But Ifferon and Délin left the Taarí to their companions, for an even bigger threat was soon upon them. The knights braced themselves as the darkness they could not see flooded down towards them, and Ifferon waited for that brief moment before he could say that they were here. And then it came.
The shadows seemed all of one type, mingled together so that bits of one seemed to merge into another, and what seemed like a wisp that blew from one became a smaller thing of darkness that moved on its own. Some of these were Spectres, and they hounded all around them with the flails of fear and the daggers of dread, while others were Meddlers, and they hunted all around them with very different weapons: claws made of shadow, which struck like sickles.
Yet the knights did not fall like their Bororian brethren might have, for their armour was thick, and their training was another shield. They swung and struck at the darkness they felt around them, and Délin cut his way through the assailants, showing them the feel of the sickle-edge of his two-handed sword.
Ifferon stabbed at a few shadows that formed around him, and they wailed like the cries of the dying, and the more haunting cries of the dead in the bitter watches of the night. He began to feel things crawling around him and upon him, and even when he turned to them, ready to fight, he found nothing there to greet him, and he began to feel the same kind of fear he knew the knights without the clearsight must feel. This grew to the edge of terror when the things that rubbed against him seemed to crawl inside him, and the fear almost drove him over the edge when those things began to give birth to thoughts inside his mind that he knew were not his own.
And so Ifferon abandoned his sword and took out a weapon better suited to this foe. He unfurled the Scroll of Mestalarin, which immediately banished the evil thoughts and the eerie feelings, planting firmly in their place a sense of strength and courage.
“Dehilasü baeos!” he cried, and it was a sound that drowned out the cries around him, and silenced the tumult of the dead.
The shadow was swept back, and the knights found for a moment that they were fighting nothing. Then it came back in, and Ifferon repeated the words, forcing it back once more. The ebb and flow continued, a tug of war between light and shade, the land around darkening and brightening as each of them pushed and pulled against each other.
Then suddenly a shadow drew up beside Ifferon, and he cried out. The Last Words had no effect upon this one, and already Ifferon was beginning to feel the strain of his contest with the Shadow Kingdom.
The deathly voice of the shadow spoke, and its words were like hammers. “Ifferon,” it said. “I am not as I appear to be. This is Yavün.”
Ifferon almost stumbled from the shock, and it gave the shadow he fought to hold back an advantage in their tug of war.
“I survived the Chasm of Issarí,” the spirit continued. “I was found by the Rebel Taarí, led by Issarí’s spouse, the River Man.”
Ifferon could barely believe these words, and yet he recognised in them a hint of the youth he had met back in Larksong, of the boy who yearned to be a man, and of the man who could not escape his own boyish ways. Yet now the naivety was supplanted by knowledge, the innocence replaced with experience, and for every part of him that he knew, there was another he could not recognise.
“Yavün,” Ifferon said, half to acknowledge who stood in this body of shade before him, and half to test the spirit with that name, as if it might send an illuding force away.
“The shadow could control me,” it said. “Now I can control the shadow.”
This statement came like dawn in the bleakest night, and it brought light into his mind, and illuminated his soul. He felt a weight had lifted, and the clouds seemed suddenly less oppressing, and the wall of shadow that stood before him seemed less daunting.
But as much as there is relief in dawn for the creatures of the day, there is relief in dusk for the creatures of the night. The weight returned, and it was heavier than ever, for in it was the weight of all nations, of all peoples, and all his predecessors, and the weight of history itself. The clouds returned, and in their gloomy glare was the reminder of the shackles of shadow, of the rule of darkness from its lofty throne. Inside Ifferon there formed a new wall of darkness, cutting off his mind from his heart, and cutting off his courage from his hope.
The darkness before him changed shape, like the shifting figures upon the land as the sun rises and falls. The pawns of the Shadow Kingdom gave way, and the kings appeared. The Molokrán came forth, and a new Alar Molokrán took the crown.
Ifferon could barely take in this new sight before they were upon him, and he was thrown back, and the Scroll fell from his hands. Délin and his knights charged forth, but they too were thrown, and they found that stabbing blindly in the dark was less effective when they were faced with the masters of darkness itself.
Then the spirit that Yavün controlled leapt upon the Alar Molokrán, and the Lichelord struggled with it for a moment, before casting it aside and turning to it with confusion. He raised his arms towards it, and it seemed that he was attempting to cast some spell upon it, to return it to his dominion, but instead it leapt upon him again. This time he seized it and swallowed it, until his own darkness swelled and grew.
The distraction gave Ifferon enough time to reclaim the Scroll, and so he unleashed it and the Ilokrán, and he cried aloud the dying words of Telm, and that god’s shimmering armour formed around him, like a halo to the silver armour he wore beneath.
“Al-iav im-iavün im-samün im-samadas, dehilasü baeos!” he cried, and it felt more forceful than ever, so much so that a gust of violent wind was blown forth with those words. The knights stopped for a moment to look at him, like they did when they saw Issarí, and like they would have if they had been there for Corrias’ resurrection.
And so the Lichelord also stopped to look upon him, but there was no awe in the darkness where his eyes might be, and no shock in the blackness where his mouth might be. Instead he seemed amused.
“Your little fire colludes with the darkness now,” he said, “and it will not be long before that candle is put out.”
Ifferon did not have the time to decipher these words, for the Molokrán attacked again. The Scroll, which mimicked now the Sword of Telm, did little to threaten them, and the Shadowstone, which mirrored the Shield of Telm, did little to ward them off, or protect against their crushing blows.
And then Geldirana returned to the field, with the memory of the Molokrán as much in her muscles as it was in her mind. She held her mace to the sky, and a bolt of lightning struck it, and then she struck the shadow as if she were lightning too.
“Blood for the Garigút!” she cried, and the look in her eyes showed that she was willing to give of her own blood as much as she was willing to take it from her enemies. But the shadow had no blood to give.
Affon also charged into the fray, waving the Ilokrán that Ifferon had given her in one hand, while waving a small mace in the other. She worked her way to where Geldirana toiled, but she was driven back, at times by the shadow, at times by her mother, and at times by her own fear, which she had never known so closely before.
In the flurry of the battle Ifferon could not tell wh
ich of the Molokrán he was attacking, or which of them was attacking him. They combined into a singular darkness, and even when at times they spread out and seemed to form distinct shapes of their own, they were merely doppelgangers of each other, and doppelgangers of the fears in the hearts and minds of every man and woman, and those forgotten fears that plagued the hearts and minds of every child.
And so they toiled in this new tug of war, where the Last Words clashed against the threat of the final words of everyone still living, and everyone who still had a last breath to give.
* * *
Yavün was still in shock from his conflict with the Lichelord, and though it was a body of shade that was absorbed into that dark master, he felt a strain in his own body, and an even greater strain in his mind. He managed to get out just in time, and he knew with great certainty that had he not abandoned that shadow body, he might have been lost in the darkness—his own light might have been blotted out, and he might have become part of the Molokrán.
Yet he could not abandon the battle, and leave Ifferon to whatever evil fate might await him. He caught sight of another Shadowspirit, and he cast his mind across to it, seizing it suddenly and taking control. He was tired, but he knew that the time of rest for the Molokrán had come and gone, and that the only rest they would grant to their enemies was the final rest in Halés.
He crept around the battlefield, watching carefully as the Molokrán advanced and fell back, like a hammer struck against an anvil, and pulled back not to rest or recover, but to add more force to another strike. Just like the anvil, the armour of Ifferon, Geldirana and Délin was battered each time, and Yavün wondered just how much they could take under the hammer of the shadow.
Then suddenly he heard a sizzling and a crackling, and he felt a great heat well inside him, as if the shadow he possessed were on fire. He began to make out whispers, and then the voice of fire he had heard so many times before. He looked down to see the Beldarian, but all he could see was the shadow, with not a hint of flame.
The Children of Telm - The Complete Epic Fantasy Trilogy Page 67