He heard shouts and the pounding of running steps, but distantly, as if the wind carried the sounds from afar.
"Back to the guard tower," Syn said, breaking into a trot. "I want to see what's happening."
They hurried through the courtyard, soldiers rushing around them. A spectral man coalesced just in front of Syntal, midstride on a collision course. Syn flinched and drew up, but the man kept running, fading as he did. As he would've made contact, he vanished entirely—then reappeared an instant later behind her, still at a mad dash.
Syn paused, mouth agape, and looked back at the running soldier.
"Are you well?" Helix asked.
"Yeah, I . . . didn't feel anything."
I thought you were supposed to feel cold when a ghost passed through you, Angbar thought. But that was an old rumor, from a time when ghosts were just Night stories. Now they were much more; now, they were real.
And when did that happen? he wondered. After the first seal broke? The third? Kirith a'jhul, what are we doing?
They reached the eastern tower and climbed, bursting into a battlement crowded with ghosts. They crouched at every crenellation, equipped with bows and spyglasses. Syntal pushed through one, forcing it unceremoniously to vanish so she could take its observation post.
"They're everywhere," she breathed. Another alarm trumpeted, a sound Angbar heard more with his heart than his ears. "Preparing for battle." He craned his neck over her and saw them—hundreds, at least, somehow clearly visible despite the darkness. "Wait here," she said, and invoked a quick chant.
"What are you doing?" Seth demanded.
"Getting a better view." Her feet left the ground as she rose straight upward, peering west.
"Syn!" Lyseira shouted.
Not entirely certain why he did it, Angbar chanted a Hover of his own. He rose to join her as he watched her face pale and her jaw drop.
Outside the keep, the blasted plain to the northwest swarmed with thousands of soldiers, as visible as if they fought in broad daylight. The distance still made it hard to pick out details, but it was clearly a battle between two armies. The defenders wore the cross-and-triangle heraldry of the soldiers in Kesselholm. He couldn't make out any details about the attackers, save one: they were winning.
"Syn." He touched the girl's shoulder. "We should get down. You can't waste your strength on this."
"What if it's out there?" Her eyes were like the ghosts, he realized: not glowing, but visible despite the darkness. Too real to fade into the night. This isn't the first chant she's performed tonight. "What if the dragon's dark is out there?" She pointed at the clashing armies.
"Then we'll see it from here and do what we have to do. But we can't just stay up here. You have to conserve your strength."
She clenched her jaw, eyes flashing, and he steeled himself for an argument. Then she hissed a frustrated sigh and sank back to the tower.
"This is just the tip of the boulder," she reported as her feet lit back on solid ground. "There's a huge battle happening out in the Waste. Looks like some kind of army trying to take the keep."
"Did you see the dragon?" Iggy asked. She answered with a tight shake of her head.
"What is this?" Seth demanded. "What's going on?"
"Ghosts," Angbar said. "Like the stag told us."
"They're not ghosts," Iggy said.
"Close enough." Angbar remembered the stag had drawn a distinction. It had even seemed angry when Angbar used the word. But the stag wasn't here now. "If these aren't ghosts, then I don't know what the word means."
"I know they're ghosts," Seth fairly growled. "Why are they here? Why are we seeing them?"
"Why do they have the symbol of the Kespran Church on their uniforms?" Lyseira murmured.
Angbar's mouth worked. "I . . ." He glanced helplessly at Syntal.
"I can tell you the Pulse is strange here," she said.
"Strange how?" Iggy pressed. "I can't even hear it here, it's so abused."
"Irregular." She clapped her hands in an uneven beat, devoid of rhythm. "Just all over the place."
"What does that mean?" Seth said.
Syntal shook her head.
"Does it matter?" Helix said. "It doesn't seem like they can hurt us. The stag said the dragon's dark would be here." He spread his hands. "We wait for it."
"But what if it's outside?" Syntal pressed. "If we just sit here, we could miss it!"
"Why is this happening now?" Seth asked. Angbar waved the question away, growing irritated with his friend's constant interrogation. He seemed to be a few steps behind the rest of them, struggling to catch up. But then it struck him: why was it happening now?
"This is the highest place here," Helix said, also ignoring Seth. "It's the best place to keep a watch for it. When we see it, we can—you know, we can go to it."
Syntal crossed her arms and leaned against the stone, an act of grudging agreement.
"Wait, though," Angbar said. "Think about it. Why is this all happening now? If the dark of the dragon is coming, why is it suddenly coming tonight? Did it see us coming? Maybe the dragon's dark has nothing to do with all this." He threw out an encompassing hand. "Maybe this is something else entirely. Or maybe this is all just a . . . a kind of play, and the dragon just has a certain time to enter."
"Exactly," Seth said.
"The stag made it sound like it was always here, like it couldn't get away," Iggy ventured.
"Right," Angbar went on, "but look at what's going on. All the soldiers, the battle outside. Maybe it was all burned in to the Pulse, somehow, when the dragon died. Maybe all these things are 'darks.' Or . . . what did the stag say? 'Pulse-shades'?"
"Something like that," Iggy said.
"What are you saying?" Lyseira pressed.
"I don't know. I guess I'm saying . . . I think you can calm down, Syn. I think this happens every night. If we miss it tonight, we'll try again tomorrow."
This startled everyone into silence. Syntal sputtered. "Well . . . but . . . you can't know that."
"No, I don't know it for sure, but like Seth said, why is it happening now? These things don't even realize we're here. It's hard to believe they're doing all this just for us. They're ghosts. Acting out their last moments is what ghosts do, at least in all the stories. I'll bet you that's exactly what they're doing here, and I'll bet you tomorrow's manna that they did it last night and they'll do it again tomorrow."
"So . . . we wait." The look on Helix's face said, That's what I said in the first place.
Watching the battle unfold was like reading a book with every other line missing. Soldiers on the battlements would crumple, or plunge over the invisible edge, but Angbar never saw what hit them. At one point a whole squad suddenly hurtled into the air, limbs flailing. They'd been standing on one of the empty sections of wall, where the battlements had collapsed. And now we know why, Angbar thought, but immediately realized that they didn't. Not really. They knew something had destroyed whole sections of wall, hurling the soldiers there to their deaths, but they didn't know what.
"They're losing," Lyseira said. "They're not going to hold it."
"Not los-ing," Syn murmured. "Lost. A long time ago."
Enemy soldiers swarmed through the breach in the wall, a line of them running through midair as they used some invisible plank to traverse the moat trench. The Kespran soldiers formed to meet them. The memory of screams and clanging swords trembled in the air.
Then, streaking in from the Waste, Angbar saw a flash of scales and horns, a wingspan as broad as five men laid end-to-end; remembered a roar that made the stones beneath his feet tremble.
The dragon had come.
It tore into the attackers, impaling them with claws as long as swords. It destroyed whatever method they'd been using to cross the moat, toppling scores of them into the empty ditch, where the weight of their armor bore them down and out of sight.
"There it is," Iggy breathed.
"It's helping the Kespran soldiers," Lyseira
said. "It's helping!"
But Syntal was already chanting. Angbar recognized the Soothe spell just as she finished. A good opener, he thought, fingers gripping the stone. Doubt it will work, but it's worth—
The thought died in his head. The dragon had recoiled from Syn's spell, appearing unharmed, but now it looked at her.
From across the courtyard, hovering under the power of its massive beating wings, it looked right at her.
"Oh," he muttered. "Oh, no."
"Get below." Iggy darted for the stairs. "Get below, now!"
One of the phantom soldiers with them on the turret gave a silent shout, hefting his sword. Chanter! his lips said. He thrust his spectral weapon toward Syntal's back. It vanished before it could connect—but a well of blood gushed from Syntal's flank all the same.
"They're real!" Helix screamed. "Oh, sehk, they're real!"
"Get below!" Iggy roared again.
"Ves!" Syntal hurled her attacker away in a flash of brilliant light—he slammed back into one of the crenellations, toppled over into nothingness—but the other soldiers in the turret turned, their attention now drawn.
The dragon leapt into the air, streaking toward them, as the soldiers to either side of Syn dropped their bows and tore their swords loose. Seth pushed in front of one of them, his spear raised to deflect the blow. Again the ghost's sword faded before it struck, and again it seemed to strike anyway, spraying the air with slivers as it bit into the wooden weapon. Helix lunged for the other attacker, accidentally interrupting his attack by forcing him to disappear.
Syntal scrambled for the stairs, a trail of blood in her wake. Lyseira vanished after her. Angbar went next, trusting Seth and Helix to ward off the phantom soldiers' attacks.
That's it, he thought as he fairly slid down the spiral stairs, I need Ves. No more beating around it.
"Is everyone coming?" Iggy shouted from the bottom of the stairs.
"Seth is still up there," Angbar returned.
"Tell him to get down here!" Iggy roared.
"He's coming!" Angbar screamed back.
They boiled into the chamber at the base of the tower. Lyseira prayed over Syntal's wound as Helix and Seth brought up the rear.
"They're coming," Seth stated flatly. His spear was gone, his forearms covered with nicks and gashes.
"I'll handle it." Syntal chanted again, finishing just as the first soldier came around the bend and into view. She made the stairwell explode with fire. The attackers died with whispered screams.
"How can they hurt us?" Helix demanded as Lyseira moved to heal Seth. "Why aren't they ignoring us anymore?"
"We should've known," Iggy said. "The stag told us the dragon would fight back. It makes sense that they all can."
Syntal put a hand to the wall, catching her breath, before moving to the doorway. "It's at the top of the tower," she reported. "We need to get out of here. We're sitting ducks if it tries to―"
The dragon's dark slammed into the dirt just outside the door, its wings folding in as it flattened its body to the ground. Angbar caught a single glimpse of its massive eyes, its slit-like pupils, before its mouth craned open. Seared to ash, he thought.
Then the memory of flames engulfed him.
Even with the fire trolls, even in the dungeon at Basica Sanctaria, he had never felt such incredible, exquisite pain. His flesh screamed, every nerve alight with agony. His vision burned away, his breath sizzled to nothing in his chest.
For a single, blazing instant, he wished for death.
iv. Lyseira
Seth slammed her to the ground in the instant the dragon unleashed its fire, shielding her from the brunt of its attack with his own body. Now her friends' shrieks faded into terrifying, wheezing groans, the stink of charred flesh rising like a black tide into the vacuum left by their screams.
Seth's weight pinned her to the stones. The skin of his cheek, sizzled raw, stuck to her shoulder as she tried to push loose of him. Her gorge rose, threatening rebellion.
Oh God, oh Akir, oh God . . .
She flooded him with healing flame. Normally he would be on his feet again instantly, the pain forgotten as his training had taught him. This time he hauled himself off her, groaning and stumbling, his clothes hanging from his frame in smoldering shreds.
In the courtyard, the dragon flexed its wings and leapt skyward, out of view. To either side of the doorway stood Iggy and Syntal, who had apparently managed to dive out of the way and avoid most of the fire. Helix and Angbar, though, were a pair of smoking husks near the stairs.
She cried out their names, her vision flooding with light as she dashed to their sides. They were alive, just barely, and in agonizing pain. The dragon had scorched them nearly to ash. In the ruins of their bodies, beyond the muscle and flesh that had been seared away, she caught glimpses of blackened bones.
She rested a hand on each of them, wincing at the extra pain her touch had to bring them, horrified by the sheer heat emanating from their bodies. Her lingering anger at her God vanished in the crucible of her need. Save them. Save them. The fire Seth had spared her was replaced by a different flame, one she welcomed and willingly seared herself with, one that blazed through her like righteousness.
The bones whitened. The flesh returned in a well of brilliant light that slashed her vision into sizzling strips of blindness.
She heard Syntal finish a chant, a long one. She ordered everyone to follow her. Seth argued. None of it mattered; Lyseira could barely see. But beneath her hands, she could tell her friends' flesh was still raw, still hot to the touch. It existed now, which was an improvement, but her work wasn't done.
She gathered her strength and dove back into the flames, channeling them until the last of her sight was gone and her ears filled with divine ringing, until even the sensation in her fingertips had burned away, and all that was left in the universe was love and sorrow, flame and pleading.
Save them.
Save them.
Please.
v. Helix
He opened his eyes from a nightmare of fire, and saw a gleaming slash in the courtyard's open air manifest into a stairway of light. Heaven, he thought, delirious. A path to Heaven.
Then Lyseira, her hand feverishly hot against his chest, crumpled to the floor. Seth, the flesh of his smoldering back stuck grotesquely to the charred remains of his shirt, staggered over and helped her to her feet. Her lips moved, her tongue gibbering nonsense as she swayed.
"Into the Rising!" Syn yelled. "Up, now! It's circling back!" She dashed up the brilliant steps two at a time, vanishing into the opaque doorway of light at the top. Angbar scrambled to his feet and followed her. Iggy set a foot on the first step and recoiled as if it had bit him. Without a word he made for the stairs, disappearing below ground instead.
"Help me with her!" Seth grunted. Lyseira sagged against him, her knees barely supporting her weight. Her need finally snapped Helix out of his daze. As they reached the stairs, the dragon's dark shot overhead, returning to finish what it had started. It wheeled in midair, wings gusting, and slammed to the courtyard with a whispered roar.
Seth hauled his sister into his livid arms and launched himself up the otherworldly stairs. Helix charged after him—
—and burst into a familiar featureless white room. Syntal waited just inside. She snapped off a quick gesture, and the stairway vanished.
"Iggy!" Angbar said. "Where's Iggy?"
"He took the stairs," Helix panted. "Went below."
"You're sure we're safe here?" Seth said. "It can't see us?"
"I'm certain." Syntal craned her head, peering through the window. "It's already leaving."
"Seth," Angbar said, gaping as he took in the young man's wounds. "Kirith a'jhul, you―"
"I'm fine." Seth sank gingerly to the gleaming floor, wincing. "You and Helix were far worse. I hit the ground and got my back singed. You two took it straight to the face."
"Did Lyseira heal you?"
"She needed me off her so she
could get to you. She did enough for that. I can wait until she recovers." Typical bravado, for Seth—betrayed this time by the tic in his cheeks, the quiver of agony in his every word. An obscure but impotent guilt chewed at Helix—he was healed, while his friend still suffered. He could do nothing about it.
"Syn," Helix said. "How long can you keep this thing going?"
"Half an hour, maybe, if I need to," she said.
Will that be enough time? he stifled the question. None of them knew. The only thing left, now, was to watch the battle play out.
From their vantage point at the window they could make out the portcullis, the southern wall, and about half of the keep. Even from their limited view, Kesselholm clearly teetered on the verge of loss. Two sections of the southern battlements stood empty now, meaning that wall had been breached twice by whatever force had managed to break the north wall earlier. Enemy troops poured through the gaps.
But the dragon's dark, freed from its fight with Syntal, now returned to the fray. It ripped into the attackers, shattering their formations and felling them by the dozens before they could penetrate farther. The Kespran troops rallied, forming up at the breaches to repel the attack there just as the first rays of dawn broke the horizon.
"They might hold it," Angbar murmured.
"It doesn't matter," Syn returned, irritated. "It's all long done. Just watch the dragon; I need to know if it . . . sweet Akir."
As the sun broke over the eastern mountains, an answering fire came from the west.
The cloudless sky swirled in the distant Waste. The darkness of the firmament lightened as if it were a mere curtain, and someone beyond had lit a torch. The swirl intensified, the sky growing livid with scarlet light.
The fighting stopped. The soldiers—defenders and attackers alike—were struck dumb, riveted to the horror in the west.
Then the curtain breached, and the sky vomited flame.
It thundered down in a pillar miles wide, instantly incinerating everything it touched—but that was only the beginning. The inferno thinned, but spread, becoming a wall of incandescence that hurtled across the plain in every direction. It grew as it roared toward Kesselholm, rearing upward in a screaming promise of holocaust.
A Season of Rendings Page 43