If only her own arrows would shine with that holy glow. She missed far more than she hit with regular bolts, for not only must she anticipate her target’s moves but Sonowin’s own shifts and turns. Worse was the fear that she might accidentally injure one of Ahaesarus’s angels. She suspected Dieredon shared the same fear, for his path was a wide loop around the bloody chaos that was the aerial conflict, hunting isolated fallen and any injured who attempted to flee. She put an arrow through the head of one such angel with black wings, who flew with the nub of his left elbow clutched to his side, blood pouring from the stump where his arm had once been.
They were nothing of the beautiful, majestic creatures they had once been, Jessilynn told herself. They had chosen their path. They had abandoned their protection of humanity.
Those justifications helped a little, but only a little.
A flash of light turned her gaze downward, to where Aurelia was bathing rows of undead with fire. Tarlak stood beside her, blasting lightning into the human formations with bolt after bolt. Jessilynn wished she could have more time to watch the two spellcasters work their magic. At the start of the battle, they had fought in similar fashion as at Hemman Field. Their spells focused on the defensive, protecting the ground troops from elemental fire and ice unleashed by their aerial foes. But as there were no mages from the Council to keep the pair on the defensive, and Ahaesarus’s angels had locked Azariah’s fallen in bloody swordplay, they could unleash their full wrath. It was terrifying.
Thank Ashhur they’re on our side, she thought as Aurelia vanished momentarily through a blue portal she tore open before her. The elf reappeared atop the unmanned inner wall, granting her a tactical vantage point over the army. Jessilynn wondered if Azariah regretted leaving the walls unmanned now that Aurelia launched fireball after fireball from her fingertips, the spells exploding into rings of flame that consumed dozens with each detonation. She was savage in her efficiency, and showed not a hint of fear to the fallen angels high above her.
Dieredon obviously saw the same display, because Sonowin’s course deviated into an intercept path between Aurelia and the few fallen who noticed her destruction and dove to stop it.
“Give her time!” he shouted.
Jessilynn was all too happy to oblige. Their curved path gave her a clean shot. Her first thudded arrow into the side of a fallen, and it looked like the shaft snapped in half upon striking bone-plate armor. Dieredon’s, to no surprise, sliced right through the fallen’s neck. The angel’s flight slowed, wings fluttering limply as blood spurted heavenward in a wide spray. Jessilynn released two more arrows, but the fallen were aware of their approach now, and they twisted and weaved to avoid the attacks. Her next three missed entirely, the closest being her second, which sliced through a few feathers on the fallen’s left wing. To her perverse relief, Dieredon missed his next two as well, the combination of a distance, an aerial dive, and enemies who dodged too much for even the otherworldly-skilled elf to overcome.
The distance between them quickly shrank. Of the four fallen diving for Aurelia, Dieredon scored another shot straight through the eye, and Jessilynn managed to chase off a second with a hit to the stomach. The other two continued unabated, and Jessilynn braced for the worst as she readied yet another arrow.
But Aurelia wasn’t oblivious to her own danger. She suddenly dropped to her knees and pressed her fists to the top of the wall. Arcs of ice sprang up around her, sliding upward with jagged edges to slam into one another to form an uneven dome. The diving fallen quickly veered to either side lest they smash themselves against the ice. Suddenly alone and slowing from an attempted climb back into the air, they were both easy pickings as Sonowin looped between them. Two shots from Jessilynn, one from Dieredon, and they both dropped, dead or dying.
Jessilynn turned back for Aurelia. Through the top of the crystalline clear dome, she saw a hint of the elf within. The telltale blue of a portal appeared, and just like that she was gone to some other part of the city.
“Eyes up, Jessilynn!” Dieredon shouted. She brought her attention back around to find him offering her a handful of arrows to replace the ones she’d used.
“How many arrows can that magic quiver of yours make?” she asked.
“As many as I need. Or at least five hundred.”
“Ever run out?”
“My aim is too good. My foes are dead before that happens.”
Jessilynn laughed. The jokes helped blunt the trauma she knew lurked at the edges of her mind.
There was so much death around her, it didn’t seem real. Angels fell from the sky, some beautiful with white feathers and golden skin, others dark-winged and with sickly, pale flesh and bone-thatched armor. Even the size of the city was overwhelming, for she had spent her life mostly isolated in the rebuilt Citadel. Thousands upon thousands of homes, stretching out for miles, and yet the city felt empty. The streets were barren.
They fought over a lifeless husk.
Once more into the fray they flew, Sonowin’s speed plus the range of their arrows keeping them just outside danger. From what Jessilynn could tell, Azariah’s ground forces had completely collapsed. Ahaesarus’s soldiers marched into the city, overwhelming the undead who only now began to scatter. The battle in the sky appeared much closer, but neither Aurelia nor Tarlak had begun directing their spells heavenward.
A sudden burst of light at the far end of the aerial battle seemed to mock her conclusion. It didn’t come from the elf or wizard, but from Azariah, who lingered near the outer edge of combat. The spell was flashy but without any harm or danger, just a bright red and yellow spark lighting up the air space between Azariah’s angels and the castle. The reaction of the armies immediately revealed its purpose. It was a signal to retreat. The surviving fallen angels immediately abandoned their engagement, turned their wings, and flew for Mordeina’s castle.
“Celestia have mercy,” Dieredon muttered.
Jessilynn realized their error a moment after the elf. They had skirted the outer edges of the battle, picking off stragglers, but that had put the duo directly in the path of the entire fallen forces as they fled to the castle. They might be fleeing, but as the black wings raced toward them, it was clear they’d be happy to take a few more lives with them along the way.
“Hang on!” the elf screamed. Jessilynn slipped her bow over her back, securing it just before Sonowin dedicated herself fully to evasive maneuvers. The wrath of the fallen was brought upon them. There would be no time or chance to retaliate. The winged horse banked hard right, avoiding a gigantic icicle that looked large enough to knock down a house. Swords swung at their sides, missing by several feet as the speedy mount weaved this way and that. Jessilynn clung tight to Dieredon as Sonowin’s actions grew more desperate. A spear shot above her shoulder, and she winced when her mind cruelly imagined what might have happened if its aim were true.
A second spear, followed by a hit with a shield that thumped off Sonowin’s front hooves. The attacks lessened, for Sonowin was faster than the fallen angels once she reached full speed. Jessilynn dared believe they would escape untouched. It was a fool’s hope; she realized that a half-second before an angel whose trajectory she’d not once witnessed barreled into them.
The collision rocked Jessilynn backwards, and her rear lifted off the saddle. Her arms slipped free from Dieredon, and she collided with the fallen, crying out in pain as the angel’s armor left a dozen bruises across her arm and chest. The angel twisted as he fell, lashing out with his sword. Sonowin banked into a spin immediately, throwing off his aim, but his jagged blade hooked the right stirrup securing Jessilynn. The leather was nearly sliced in half. Latching onto the winged horse’s back with all her might was all she could do to keep from falling.
Sonowin’s bank revolved into a full corkscrew. Dieredon, showing the reflexes that made him one of Dezrel’s most fearsome killers, had already abandoned his bow and drawn one of the long knives he kept sheathed at his hip. Sunlight f
lashed off the blade’s edge as their corkscrew path brought them up and around to make contact yet again with the fallen. Blood followed in a great crimson shower. The motion had him momentarily standing atop the winged horse, and try as she might, Jessilynn could not reach him, nor was she adequately prepared for the sudden head-over-head spin.
Her heart leaped into her throat. She felt herself slipping.
The stirrup fully separated from the saddle. Sonowin’s spin continued amid the frantic dive, and Jessilynn reached out for Dieredon, to hold onto him as she fell. Her fingers touched the leather of his armor, a brush of green cloth, and then she was drifting away. The other stirrup tightened around her leg, she screamed as it wrenched her body sideways. The spin continued. The stirrup, never meant to handle such strain, twisted once and then snapped free of the saddle.
She fell.
Sky rotated over ground over sky. Her arms flailed, and she kicked as if she were swimming and not plummeting to her death. She saw Sonowin briefly, her wings flaring outward to slow her dive. Jessilynn was so disoriented, she didn’t even know if the winged horse was above her or below her. Dieredon remained so close, diving she saw, diving for her. He crouched atop the saddle, one hand clutching the reins, the other outstretched. She reached, but too far, he was too far above her, the ground too close. Panic threatened to take her, but she refused it. Think. Move. Act.
Jessilynn gave up reaching, and instead she pulled her arm back, drew her knees to her chest, and then kicked so that her feet pointed toward the elf instead. Dieredon could not reach her legs, just as he could not reach her arm...but he could reach the dangling stirrup still wrapped tightly about her leg. He grabbed the leather and pulled with all his strength. She floated closer, closer. His hand was on her ankle. His other hand took her waist. He pulled her close, she felt his arms around him, and then Sonowin’s wings filled her vision as they banked hard.
The streets of Mordeina flashed underneath her, so close they were a blur. She held onto the elf for a second longer, needing to feel his proximity, needing the comfort of his arms about her, before she pulled free of him. She returned to her seat behind him, only now without stirrups, she needed to wrap her hands about his waist to keep herself steady. Dieredon craned his head around to address her over his shoulder.
“Never do that again,” he said. A smile was on his face.
He wasn’t watching Sonowin’s flight path. He never saw the spear. Jessilynn did. Her eyes widened and she went to screech a warning, but it was too late.
The spear did not pierce his chest so much as scrape across it. The sharp end, twisted and curved by Ashhur’s curse into a strange, cruel shape no mortal blacksmith would ever recreate, tore apart his leather armor. It gashed open his chest, and by the terrible snapping noise that haunted Jessilynn’s mind, it no doubt broke several ribs. Dieredon immediately went limp, his hands releasing the reins. There were no stirrups to catch him, and Jessilynn’s mind was but a blank white slate incapable of giving her body movement. They were too close to the castle. Sonowin veered to the right to avoid colliding with the castle wall. Dieredon fell, hit the hard ground below, and then rolled.
She screamed. Wordless horror. A meaningless protest. Perhaps it had words, maybe the word ‘no’, maybe the elf’s name. None of it registered in her mind.
Jessilynn didn’t need to give a single order. Sonowin turned immediately, circling back to retrieve her master. The bastard who threw the spear had the same idea. His black wings beat with frantic strength as he flew to finish off the injured elf. Panic tried, and failed, to overcome Jessilynn. Instinct took over. No thinking. No doubt. She pulled the bow from her back, withdrew one of her last few arrows, and nocked it. She didn’t calculate the wind, the speed they traveled, or the path of her target. She didn’t need to. She would never allow him to reach the elf, never allow him to hurt her dear friend further. She aimed the arrow to where it felt right, and then released.
The arrow pierced one side of the fallen angel’s neck and out the other. He dropped instantly. She hoped it hurt. She hoped it hurt like the Abyss.
“Go to him,” she pleaded into Sonowin’s ear, a thoroughly unnecessary command.
Together they dove for Mordeina’s castle, to the body bleeding out upon the steps, and she prayed to a god she feared no longer listened to her that the elf would survive.
29
Azariah dashed through his tower like a madman, scattering books and tossing aside tables as he rambled the same phrase over and over. The city had fallen, his undead army crushed, his fallen forces decimated. The battle still raged, but it was scattered and wild, less a war between armies and more a hundred skirmishes, of which his loyal subjects were losing far too many.
“Not enough time, not enough time, damn it all, not enough time.”
It seemed Dezrel, and all three of her gods, conspired against him. Never before had the need to escape shown so clearly. But the runes, the gateway...he failed once. Could he manage it now?
“Have I even a choice?” he asked, now standing before the gateway in the heart of the tower chamber. His wings folded behind his back. He withdrew Velixar’s journal, his skin shivering at its touch. There was so much power within those pages, so much wisdom for him to gain. Perhaps he had been too hasty in his plans to throw Avlimar to the ground, too confident in the righteousness of his cause. Better now to escape it all. Dezrel was a sinful, wretched mess. Any other world surely had to be better.
“As many worlds as there are stars, and each with its own creators, its own gods, and its own people living lives as best they know how before their souls depart their meager flesh,” he read aloud, a bit of wisdom Ashhur himself had shared explicitly with the first man, Jacob Eveningstar. And if Azariah could harness the necessary power within him, he could open a gateway to one of those worlds, just like the daughter of balance, Tessanna, had granted the war god Thulos entrance six years hence.
Azariah started the necessary chant. Words of power flowed out of him, and he felt the strain on his mind grow at a frightening pace. Light gathered in the center of the ring of thirteen stones, swirling together to form an ethereal doorway. It was so faint, the translucent blue not yet leading anywhere. He needed to connect it to a destination, but where, and did he have the strength?
The door to his tower opened. Azariah turned, and his stomach clenched at the sight of his visitor.
“Here you are,” Aurelia Tun said. She stepped inside, and the door closed behind her. Sparks of flame flew from the top of the staff she held. Her beautiful dress was stained with ash and smeared with blood, yet none of it appeared to be hers.
“Are you hunting me, elf?” he asked, stalling for time. There was no chance for him to finish the spell in her presence. The elf’s magical prowess was legendary, as he had seen for himself during the second Gods’ War. Panic fueled his thoughts while he pondered a solution. He couldn’t open a portal, not to any world beyond Dezrel, so what options were left to him?
“Hunting?” she asked, her footfalls echoed upon stone as she approached. “No, angel, not hunting. I am no hunter, and you no fleeing prey. You are snake curled in a robin’s nest, having already devoured all the eggs. Consider me the one who has come to rip off your scales.”
Azariah prepared to release his hold on the portal so he might battle, but then paused. A thought occurred to him. No, he could not open a doorway to another world beyond Dezrel, not one watched over by other gods. There was one world, though, that was far closer, and whose walls had grown dangerously thin.
“No, I dare say you won’t,” Azariah said. He took a careful step back as the elf neared. He feared she’d clobber him with her staff before he might speak his proposal. “What you will do is create for me a portal to some far distant land on Dezrel, and claim you took my life and reduced my body to ashes, thus allowing me to live the rest of my days in peace.”
“Will I?” she asked. “Why is that?”
“Because of what I can give you in return.”
The anger in her walnut-colored eyes would be impressive if it weren’t so dangerous.
“There is nothing you can offer me I would care to accept, angel,” she said.
Azariah grinned despite the blood it spread across his teeth. “Oh, I think there is.” He clenched his hands into fists and poured more of his power into the shimmering gate. It quadrupled in size, its surface shimmering with newfound color. Ripples washed over it, and as they calmed more colors hardened into view. The green of a rolling field. A lighter blue, of a calm, peaceful sky. Aurelia watched, her obvious curiosity getting the best of her.
Sweat beaded Azariah’s forehead, but he dared not break his concentration. He focused on a singular entity in his mind, a being whom he had personally met prior to the sky splitting open and Ashhur sending them to wage war in his name.
One last gasp, and the door ripped open completely, revealing an image otherworldly stark and bright. Azariah’s entire body shuddered, his wings fluttering with his every breath, as he maintained control.
“It can’t be,” Aurelia whispered.
On the other side of the portal was a young girl with auburn hair that hung down to her waist. Her chestnut eyes sparkled, her smile without a care in the world. Her dress was a pristine white with green trim. Flowers bloomed within her hair. She lay in a field of grass, singing a song neither could hear, as she splashed her free hand in a shallow stream that flowed beside her. Though she last drew breath at the age of two, she was older now, yet not quite as old as she would be upon Dezrel. Time moved in strange patterns in the Golden Eternity.
The King of the Fallen Page 29