“Where will you run, uamhas?” the warrior taunted.
From the trees to the right of the speaker came a living missile then, so suddenly, a feline form flying fast into the Usgar warrior, slamming against him before he could turn and bring his spear to bear, and tumbling with him into the trees the other way.
Bahdlahn heard the growls, the roar, the screams of shock and terror. He wasn’t about to wait around to learn the outcome, though, not with a second Usgar behind him. Off he ran, right past the tree where the first warrior had been, crashing through the limbs and stumbling on, out of the copse and then again down the mountainside.
He heard that second Usgar shout out behind him, a call of anger and surprise. How quickly those shouts, too, turned to screams of terror, accompanied by the leopard’s growls.
Down Bahdlahn ran, certain that he was being pursued once more, by Usgar or by the great cat. He cut a sharp turn around a boulder, veering to his left along the descending trail, then skidded to a stop as something flew down in front of him, landing on the trail. For a moment, he was sure it was the leopard, but then it was not, not fully, at least.
Aoleyn! She stood before him on shaky legs, trembling as they turned from those of a great cat to those of the young woman. Her face glowed with tattoos of a cat’s face, mingling with her features, but then fading.
And it was Aoleyn, just Aoleyn, standing on the trail, her clothing torn and ragged, barely covering her, her hands red with blood.
Bahdlahn ran to her and hugged her, and checked those hands, only to realize that it wasn’t her blood caked about her fingers and under her nails. He stepped back, staring at her wide-eyed.
She held her arms up and he pulled her in to hug her once more, crushing her close.
“Tay Aillig is dead,” she whispered in his ear. “I can’no go back. They’ll not hear my words.”
“Where then?” Bahdlahn asked. “To Fasach Crann?”
Aoleyn nodded. “And fast. We must be fast away. Mairen hunts me.”
Bahdlahn took her by the hand and started to move off, but Aoleyn tugged, resisting, and shook her head when he glanced back to regard her.
“Too slow,” she said, pulling him in close to her side. She moved to a high point, then began to sing softly, words—if they were words—that Bahdlahn could not decipher. The couple rose up from the ground, as if on a pillow of air, and down the mountainside they floated, gaining speed.
It was not long before they both realized that something was wrong across the mountainside, though. From their lofty vantage, the lake was spread before them, and its shores appeared … wrong. The entire eastern and southern parts of the shore—those closest to their position—looked like a writhing mass of insects. Out on the water, Bahdlahn saw the ships, heading away from shore from several of the lakeman villages, and he noted the odd wakes trailing after them.
Suddenly the truth dawned on Bahdlahn—and on Aoleyn, too, he knew from her gasp. His eyes widened in shock.
“Hold on more tightly,” Aoleyn told him, and a burst of wind came up from nowhere, it seemed, speeding them down the mountain.
* * *
A pair of mundunugu led the way, one helping Pixquicauh, who was not skilled on a lizard mount, the other bearing the mirror, as Scathmizzane had insisted. They clambered over the high ridge, scouts to either side guiding them, and down to the highest small plateau on the mountain, one that held a deep chasm.
The High Priest dismounted unsteadily and collected himself carefully before daring to approach the gorge. He waved to his escorts, who carried the mirror to him.
Pixquicauh closed his eyes. This was his most important task, his most sacred duty. He heard the whispers of Scathmizzane. He positioned the mundunugu accordingly and had them angle the mirror to the east, to catch the reflection of the rising sun. Barely had the polished gold flashed with a brilliant and blinding catch of those beams than the mirror suddenly sparked and seemed to leap from the grasp of the two warriors, who helplessly flailed in trying to catch it as it pitched into the chasm.
Panicked, one fell to the ground grabbing, grabbing, and the other seemed about to leap in after the sacred item.
“At ease, you fools,” Pixquicauh said to them. Both turned back to regard him as he stood there, nodding, and though his skull face couldn’t smile, the pair surely noted the lightness of the augur behind that permanent mask.
“This is as Scathmizzane desired,” he explained. He motioned to the lizards. “You may go.”
“You will ride with us, High Priest,” said one.
Pixquicauh shook his head, then walked around the chasm and climbed the northwestern ridge, the top of which afforded a grand view of the human tribe’s mountain encampment. When he peered over those stones, Pixquicauh found that he could barely breathe, for in looking down, he saw the pines, the patch of eternal summer, and the nearly translucent, giant orange crystal.
“My Glorious Gold,” he whispered, he prayed.
And he watched.
* * *
Climbing magically was one thing, floating down to the ground on malachite magic was one thing, but speeding down the mountainside, the trees whirring past below, was something else altogether!
Fortunately, Aoleyn had expected this, so when Bahdlahn held on for all his life, crushing himself against Aoleyn’s back as she worked the magic, she was able to maintain her concentration.
She had to.
As they neared the lower slopes, the couple saw clearly the swarm of enemies that had come against the lake towns, thousands of strange-looking humanoids, tall and thin and with faces streaked red and blue, forehead to lips. Many rode lizards. Others lifted spears on throwing sticks and launched them at the flying witch.
Aoleyn called upon her moonstone to create gusts of wind to deter those missiles, and then she climbed higher. At first, she figured to land outside one of the towns, hopefully the one named Fasach Crann, that she and Bahdlahn could go in to introduce themselves and possibly gain acceptance. Now, though, such a course was clearly impossible. These strange monsters held the towns, held all the land about the northwestern base of Fireach Speuer, as far as Aoleyn could tell.
The boats were their only hope, and to get to those boats, Aoleyn had to fly out over the water, and so over the lizards and their riders, which were swimming out after the flotilla.
Aoleyn was desperately tired. Flying was a difficult and draining magic, going down the mountainside even more so, but with Bahdlahn on her back … she might as well have been physically piggy-backing the man as she ran across a field.
She dismissed the negative thoughts and found her focus, sweeping down above Fasach Crann, too fast for the spear-throwers to react and let fly, then right out over the beach and above Loch Beag. It took the woman little time to recognize that the lizards would catch the boats, and so she eased her moonstone flight just a bit and sent her energies into the gray bar on her anklet.
A bolt of lightning shot down from the witch to the water, there dispersing into a stunning ball of energy that crackled about the lead lizards. They faltered and slowed.
“I’m sorry, Bahdlahn,” Aoleyn said, weighing the good of the many in the boats over that of herself and Bahdlahn. She understood what it would take to drive back the chasing swimmers, and knew that such magic would not allow her to find the strength to get the couple out to those fleeing craft.
Another lightning bolt shot down, then a third.
Aoleyn and Bahdlahn dipped toward the lake, the witch catching them only at the last moment.
Up she flew, up and away, her last burst of energy thrown into her moonstone and malachite. And as she rose, she threw another lightning bolt, and the leading lizards all faltered, and those behind began turning for the shore.
“Hold me close,” she bade the young man, and he did as the magic expired, that last burst of flight carrying them further out over the water, to splash down hard into the cold lake.
* * *
The
song wouldn’t come to them. Their dance became a jumbled mayhem of uncomplimentary movements and stumbles.
“Aoleyn!” Mairen cursed, wrongly believing that the apostate was somehow still defeating them. Aoleyn had thrown them from her mind, unbelievably, and now was somehow interfering with the harmony of Usgar.
From the sacred lea, the witches could hear the rumbles of thunder down the mountain, the lightning explosions, and then, finally, the tremendous grumble of the avalanche as the rocky spur collapsed. Down Fireach Speuer below the Usgar encampment, smoke and dust rose into the air.
“She can’no be this powerful,” Sorcha said to Mairen. Sorcha held up her hands in surrender, giving up her dance altogether. “There is something else.”
Cries from the encampment just north of them interrupted the old witch. Several moved as if meaning to go investigate, but Mairen held them back.
“Connebragh,” she called, waving for that one alone to go investigate. Just returned from her fruitless spiritual searching, the younger witch held up her arms helplessly, her stare incredulous.
“Just run,” Mairen yelled at her, and the flustered woman sped off, disappearing into the jumble of small pines.
To the rest of them, Mairen ordered, “Dance! Dance! Find the song of Usgar in your hearts. Sing the song of Usgar with your lips. Deny the apostate!”
They tried, forming their circle near the perimeter of Dail Usgar, and beginning again their slow-turning dance, beginning again their singing, which sounded horribly off-key.
“Damn her, Usgar,” Mairen cursed Aoleyn again and she moved right beside the crystal god and even reached out to place her hand upon the physical manifestation of their divinity.
As soon as her fingers touched the warm—very warm!—obelisk, Mairen understood her mistake. It was not Aoleyn. It could not be Aoleyn, no!
For she felt a presence within that giant crystal such as she had ever known before, something mightier than she had ever imagined, something foreign, some new song so beautiful that it stole her breath and froze her thoughts upon its melody alone.
“Usgar-righinn?” Sorcha called, but Mairen didn’t hear.
The witches stopped dancing and cautiously approached, but Mairen didn’t know it.
All she knew was the power within the crystal, within the mountain. Something bright and glorious, something bubbling up from inside the heart of Fireach Speuer.
The ground beneath her feet began to shift and liquefy, but Mairen didn’t know it. All of Dail Usgar churned and melted, the twelve witches standing in the lea sinking suddenly to their waists in mud, but it wasn’t until her fingers slipped from the side of the crystal that Mairen even realized it.
She came from her trance, hearing the cries of shock from her fellow witches, glancing about to see them all struggling to get to the edge, to the still-solid ground near the pines. Mairen, too, tried to wade through, but she felt the ground already hardening about her.
Hardening about them all.
“What is this, Usgar-righinn?” Annagh pleaded.
“Aoleyn!” Mairen answered, for she had no other name to put to it.
They were caught, then, all of them, the ground firming about them, as solidly as if it had never been disturbed, except that instead of thick grass carpeting the place, there were only twelve sprouts, the witches themselves, as if they were trees planted about the crystal.
“Pray to Usgar,” Sorcha implored them. “Sing!”
But there was no music.
* * *
They floundered in the water, for neither really knew how to swim. Aoleyn tried to use her malachite to lift them, but Bahdlahn was terribly heavy and the magic had worn too greatly on her. She needed time to simply rest and recover her thoughts and breath.
But they had no time.
On impulse, she called to the blue stone of her anklet, creating a sheet of ice, but under them, directly below. It shot up fast, colliding hard and causing more than a few bruises, but when it surfaced, the small ice floe had Aoleyn and her companion’s heads above the water, at least.
Not that it would do them any good unless she could find more magical strength, she realized, for the lead lizards and riders, too far back now, perhaps, to catch the boats, could surely catch these two!
“Do something,” Bahdlahn implored her. “I can’no…”
He didn’t even know a word for “swim.”
Aoleyn listened for the song, then looked about desperately for an answer. Turning to gauge the distance to the boats, she saw a man, stocky and muscled, and wearing a gleaming silver breastplate, running at her.
“Who?” she gasped.
“I do’no know,” Bahdlahn said, his voice just as breathless.
Running with long strides, obviously magically enhanced, the man cut the distance quickly and soon pulled up right beside the couple. He reached down and took Aoleyn’s hand, and as soon as she grasped his fingers she felt the magic that was keeping him atop the water, now gripping her and lifting her up as well.
Aoleyn caught that magic, which was nowhere near as exhausting as her malachite or moonstone, and reached back to Bahdlahn, sharing it down the line.
The three turned and ran. The nearest lizard riders tried to launch spears at them, but the attempts flew wildly and splashed down harmlessly.
Soon after, the trio neared a boat, and they heard arguing there, lakemen pointing and cursing, and Aoleyn heard the name “Usgar” spoken more than once.
Another man came up between a pair of angry lakemen, and his head was not elongated from wrapping, and Aoleyn took heart, for this man, she recognized.
“Talmadge,” she called.
“Aoleyn!”
“No, she is Usgar!” the man beside Talmadge said, shoving him.
“She is a friend. She saved me.”
More arguing ensued, and the trio cautiously slowed their approach.
“Not him!” Aoleyn heard a lakeman demand, and she knew he was speaking of Bahdlahn. “No Usgar!”
Talmadge seemed to be making little progress in this fight, with the dozen lakemen and women on the boat arguing against him, his only support, a woman’s voice from someone Aoleyn could not see.
“He’s not an Usgar,” Aoleyn called. “Talmadge, this is Bahdlahn of Fasach Crann, son of Innevah, who was with child when the Usgar captured her.”
The yelling on the boat stopped immediately, all of them crowding near the stern, trying to get a look.
“Innevah,” more than one said. “Innevah.”
The older ones had known her. The younger ones knew her name.
Aoleyn and her two companions were soon on the boat, the woman sitting against the back rail, trying to gather her strength, physical and magical, once more, while Bahdlahn was pulled away by the lakemen, questions coming at him from every direction.
A couple of others, along with Aydrian and Talmadge, managed the small, square sail.
Apart from the conversations with Bahdlahn, which quickly ebbed, many arguments broke out about where they should go. Most argued for a turn to the east, the nearest bank, which could be reached in a couple of hours, despite the unfavorable winds. But a few kept pointing to the north and west, straight across the long lake.
“Ask her,” Talmadge said finally, pointing to Aoleyn, and all eyes turned her way.
“What?” She didn’t know the question, and didn’t know what to think about any of this, still stunned by the sheer magnitude of life-changing events that had happened this day—and the sun wasn’t even up above the top of Fireach Speuer yet!
“You have seen the attackers,” Talmadge told her. “The argument across the boats is to flee fully, across the lake, or take to shore and counterattack.”
“Run,” Aoleyn said before even thinking about it. “They are thousands, many thousands. You can’no beat them. Even the Usgar…”
Her voice trailed away, and the arguing continued, with shouting from boat to boat in the large and growing refugee flotilla. Sq
uare sails catching the southern wind, whatever choice they might eventually make, at this point the goal was simply to put the lizard-riding attackers far behind.
Cries of terror and pain echoed across the waters sporadically, most from the south, from those who had tried to hide instead of fleeing, no doubt, then a larger communal shout went up somewhere along the lake’s western shore.
“Car Seileach,” Talmadge said and sighed.
* * *
No sooner had Connebragh arrived at the northern edge of the winter platform to better see the mounting turmoil down the mountainside than cries rang up from both the east and the west. The witch ran about, trying to get a measure of the situation that she could report to Mairen, but she stopped dead in her tracks, her eyes going wide, for never had she seen such creatures as these riding in on lizards to meet the line of Usgar warriors.
She thought them beautiful and hideous all at once, with their red and blue faces and golden skin. Mesmerized, Connebragh hardly noted the swarm of spears flying at the warriors from every ridge, it seemed, and it wasn’t until half the defending line went down hard, writhing and spurting blood, that she came to truly appreciate the situation.
Only the Coven could stop the Usgar camp from being quickly overrun.
She rushed for the trees, hearing calls for Tay Aillig, who had not returned, and for Ahn’Namay, who had taken the lead in the Usgar-triath’s absence.
Connebragh passed him near the center of the compound, barking orders, waving warriors all about. The witch had barely cleared him, though, when his calls became sudden grunts and groans, and the stones about him clattered with falling missiles. She glanced over her shoulder to see him lying on his back, a dozen spears sticking from his body.
On she ran, into the grove, pushing through branches toward Dail Usgar.
The crystal obelisk flared brilliantly, its light so blinding that it stopped her where she stood among the second rank of pines. As the initial brilliance wore away and her eyes readjusted, Connebragh saw her sisters, all of them, buried to their waists in dirt—and where was the soft grass of the beautiful lea?
Reckoning of Fallen Gods Page 38