“Going?” Master Viscenti asked.
“Their spirits,” Braumin Herde explained.
“Fireach Speuer,” Aydrian said to Aoleyn, who nodded solemnly.
“To the caves beneath the God Crystal, and so Scathmizzane will find of these spirits his next great power to use, perhaps against us here.”
“You underestimate the power of Saint-Mere-Abelle,” Father Abbot Braumin said loudly, but Aoleyn recognized that there was little conviction behind the boast.
“We cannot stay here,” Aoleyn said again.
“Where would you have us go?” asked Father Abbot Braumin.
Aoleyn looked to Aydrian.
“Fireach Speuer,” Aydrian answered.
“You would have us go forth and fight our way across the world?” Braumin asked.
“I do not believe that is what Aoleyn has in mind,” said Aydrian, eyeing the woman.
Aoleyn locked his gaze with her own and held it fast. They both understood that they had to get back to the mountain and find some way to shut down the heinous power of the God Crystal.
But how? Aoleyn retired to her room, trying to sort out all that she knew and all that she suspected. She had barely closed the door, though, when there came a loud rapping upon it. She pulled it open to find Aydrian, with word that they had been summoned back to Father Abbot Braumin’s chambers.
The masters were gathered there with Braumin and with another, familiar face. Brother Thaddius looked pale, and when he nodded in recognition of Aoleyn and Aydrian, more than a little dust fell from his hair.
“Brother Thaddius has much to tell us,” Father Abbot Braumin greeted the pair. “And much, so it seems, that would agree with your assessment, my dear Aoleyn.”
“I found the writings of the man who inspired the man who inspired Saint Belfour to go south and west to try to find the xoconai,” Thaddius said. “He speaks of a drowned city.”
That perked up Aoleyn and Aydrian, and Thaddius nodded.
“A drowned city he names Otontotomi,” the monk confirmed. “He writes that he saw this place. This long-ago monk, Brother Ferdinand, claimed to have traveled great distances on beams of light reflected in golden mirrors. He was not taken seriously by the others, but now that we have seen these mirror chambers in pyramids, how can we doubt?”
Aoleyn and Aydrian rushed over to the table, where Thaddius had spread some old parchments. They meant nothing to Aoleyn, of course, for she couldn’t read the language of Honce—couldn’t read at all, for that matter—but while she continued to listen to Thaddius, she noticed Aydrian taking a great interest in the lettering on the spread scroll.
Thaddius laid out his full conclusions from his investigation, that the xoconai had indeed been spoken of by the monks in the early days of the Abellican Church. As far as he could tell, though, only this one, Brother Ferdinand, would make the claim that the bright-faced race still survived, and furthermore, that he had walked among them.
“When he returned from his journeys, the other monks thought him mad, or a liar,” Thaddius explained. “Many of those who had known Brother Ferdinand when he had set out from Saint-Mere-Abelle were long dead by the time he returned. They had no way to confirm his claims, for they would have had to retrace his steps, across the deserts of Behren, across the steppes of To-gai, where the fierce To-gai-ru did not often accept guests.”
“So they dismissed him,” Father Abbot Braumin said. “But it would seem that Brother Ferdinand was not lying. It is amazing that such a large population and sophisticated culture could exist with so little contact for all these centuries.”
“We do not travel to the west,” Master Viscenti reminded. “What need have we? When are we not occupied in simply holding this kingdom of Honce together?”
“A fine point,” the father abbot agreed. “Yet, still, neither did the sidhe … the xoconai travel east.”
Aoleyn winced at that, just a bit, considering her role in ending that tradition. She had defeated Cizinfozza, who, apparently, had been holding the spirits of the dead in magical chains in order to keep Scathmizzane and his children from crossing the mountains.
Beside her, Aydrian gasped, drawing her attention and that of the others.
“By Saint Abelle,” he whispered, his eyes locked upon the scroll. He glanced at Aoleyn and placed his finger on a line of text, running it across as he read aloud, “They eat the dead and from the dead find power.”
Aoleyn’s black eyes opened wide and she found it hard to breathe.
“What could that mean?” Master Viscenti asked.
Aoleyn hardly heard him, and she didn’t listen when the father abbot and some other monks began taking up the debate. There was nothing cryptic about that line to Aoleyn. She knew exactly what it meant, and had seen it up close. She stared at Aydrian, who replied with a slight nod.
“We cannot stay here,” Aoleyn said again. “We have to get there. At once.”
“Brother Ferdinand hints that the light of diamonds can activate the mirrors,” Thaddius told her. “He claimed that he walked on beams of light of his own making.”
“This could prove invaluable in countering our enemies all about Honce,” Father Abbot Braumin said. “We could move brothers and soldiers where we are least expected, where our enemies are least prepared.” His voice trailed off as he studied the three at the table. “You are thinking of riding the light all the way back to the west.”
Aydrian nodded. “How can we not? You heard what Aoleyn told us of the fate of Saint Gwendolyn. What then lies in store for Saint-Mere-Abelle?”
“Saint Gwendolyn?” Brother Thaddius asked. “Abbess Victoria?”
“It is gone,” Braumin replied. “The cliff cut out from beneath it, dropping it to the sea, so said Aoleyn.”
Aoleyn caught Thaddius’s stare as he looked over at her, and she nodded. “Many got out,” she offered. “Many did not.”
“How could they do this?” Thaddius asked, looking to the father abbot, to Aoleyn, to anyone who might offer an answer.
“How did they sunder a mountain range to drain a high lake?” Aydrian replied.
“They eat the dead and from the dead find power,” Aoleyn answered.
“We must go,” said Aydrian. “We must go at once, seize their mirrors in the field beyond this place, and so begin our journey, pyramid to pyramid.” He looked to Father Abbot Braumin.
“It seems reckless,” he said, half shaking his head, half nodding. “Are we to charge forth and take the field?”
“Just help us get there,” said Aydrian. “I will see Aoleyn through her journey.”
“Just you two? Nay, the Abellican Church must—”
“I will go,” Brother Thaddius offered. “I beg your leave in this. And Sister Elysant will join me.” He looked up at Aydrian and Aoleyn. “We four. We will get there quickly, before our enemies can raise a defense against us.”
“And we will stop them before they can do to Saint-Mere-Abelle what they did to Saint Gwendolyn,” said Aydrian.
Beside him, Aoleyn nodded, though she had no idea of how they might accomplish such a thing.
She did know, however, that they had to try.
* * *
In the darkness they departed, not through the gates, which were surely being monitored, but over the wall, floating down through the magic of malachite, shrouded in darkness through the magic of diamond.
The four friends stayed low to the ground as they crossed the field, Thaddius keeping the darkness thick about them. Aydrian carried Aoleyn, for her vision was elsewhere, the woman using the song of the wedstone, the garnet, and the quartz, the former two to track and direct the movements of her friends, the latter to see their destination: the westernmost pair of pyramids the xoconai had constructed on the field.
They were more than halfway across the field when Thaddius stopped them, then moved ahead of them, taking the globe of darkness with him to shield the other three. Aydrian called to Aoleyn, and she returned to her body, bli
nking her eyes open as the ranger laid her down on the ground.
Aoleyn rolled over and pulled herself up to her knees, taking in the scene.
“Can you do this?” Aydrian whispered to her.
Aoleyn pulled forth the crystal filled with lodestone and nodded, to inspire confidence in herself as much as in her companion. She had two jobs here, and both seemed daunting.
She focused on the magic of the crystal, finding first the attraction to the metal clips used on the payload back at the monastery, then locating the magnetic pull of the lodestones thick in the distant xoconai divine throwers.
She fell into the song more deeply, exciting the magical energies of the small crystal, feeling the power pull against her grip as it grew in attraction to those distant magical cannons.
Aoleyn angled it high and let it fly simply by letting it go, and off it soared into the darkness. She looked at Aydrian and nodded, confident it would find the divine throwers—confident that it had found the divine throwers, when she heard the crack of her missile striking something across the field.
Aoleyn fell into the song of her moonstone, letting it flow fully through her form. She lifted from the ground, facing back toward the monastery, and brought a flicker to the diamond of her belly ring.
Only a heartbeat later, she heard the great creaking and whooshing sound, Father Abbot Braumin’s promised diversion, launched from the abbey’s largest catapult.
Aoleyn spotted the huge missile arching out from over the monastery wall, climbing into the night sky, soaring right above her.
She timed her next spell as she climbed higher into the air and blew forth from her magic a powerful blast of wind, a sudden tempest, just as the giant catapult payload passed above her. The wind caught the extended flaps of the missile, lifting them like wings and lifting the missile itself higher, too, extending its range.
In that jostling, some of the payload, a small mountain of enchanted celestite bits, flew out, sparkling as they tumbled across the dark sky.
Aoleyn turned to follow the huge shot’s flight and smiled grimly as she noted the slight shift in the flight path, the metal rushing for the call of her distant lodestone. She and the monks had turned the trick on Scathmizzane—as he had used his enchanted spears to direct the missiles of the divine throwers, so were they now delivering this enchanted bomb into the heart of the xoconai camp!
The huge bundle tumbled and continued to spew celestite bits, each of those particles a miniature bomb all its own. A cluster of a thousand small sparkles fell from the sky, a thousand tiny fireballs exploding on impact, with a bright flash of fiery light, shaking the ground in an earth-quaking roll of thunder. On and on it went, a thousand flashes, each a killing fireball.
“Go, go, go!” Thaddius told them, and on the ground below, Aoleyn’s three friends sprinted for the sudden and violent tumult consuming the enemy camp. Elysant and Aydrian took the lead, Thaddius close behind, Aoleyn flying above them, easily pacing them, particularly since they were running across ground trembling under the barrage of magical explosions. More than once, one or another stumbled.
In the flashes and small fireballs, the woman saw the divine throwers, saw the xoconai tents, many catching fire, saw the enemies themselves, many leaping and slapping at the sharp and painful miniature bombs or at their own smoking clothes.
When she heard a voice calling out against her charging friends, Aoleyn veered off to the west and sped away, flying into the xoconai camp just ahead of her companions. She set down among the divine throwers and stamped her foot hard. The graphite of her anklet sent a rush of lightning out in a widening circle about her, stunning enemies, dropping enemies, throwing some into the air. Grimly satisfied at the destruction all about her, Aoleyn found her crystal lying on the ground beside one damaged thrower. It had served her well, and so she took it up once more and set it into the folds of the cloak the monks had given her.
In charged her friends, Aydrian cutting down a pair of enemies with precise cuts of that magnificent sword, Elysant rolling between a pair, her stone staff working in a blur of strikes and sweeps that soon had the pair tumbling and groaning.
“Take the left!” Thaddius called to Aoleyn and Aydrian, while he and Elysant sped toward the western pyramid on the right.
Aydrian, sword at the ready, rushed before Aoleyn to lead the way into that pyramid, but as they neared it, a group of xoconai came out to intercept them, javelins lifted high. The ranger growled and charged, then pulled up in surprise when Aoleyn, still in the magic of her moonstone, flew right past him, touching down.
The xoconai threw their spears, but Aoleyn threw her magic, dropping the flight and altering the song to let forth another tremendous blast of wind—filling this one with wisps of fire, as she had done to the witches of the Coven on that long-ago day.
Xoconai javelins flipped crazily and scattered back the way they had come, and the warriors, too, flew away, caught by the blast of hot wind and sent tumbling. Some crashed against the front side of the pyramid, a couple rolled and bounced past it, and another pair went rolling into the open door of the structure.
Aydrian went in behind them, sword flashing with such efficiency that Aoleyn found no threat when she came into the pyramid behind him.
“Be quick,” he told her.
It wasn’t hard for Aoleyn to figure out the instrument the xoconai had erected here, from simple observation and from Thaddius’s notes on the writings of Brother Ferdinand. In the center of the pyramid hung a single golden mirror, tightly secured, its shiny side facing west. There was a hole in the pyramid’s back wall.
Aydrian moved to face the mirror, just to the side of the hole in the wall, while Aoleyn called upon her diamond.
The witch held her breath—she heard Aydrian do so, as well—when she brought a light to that diamond. A flash in the mirror showed Aydrian’s reflection clearly.
And then it didn’t.
Aoleyn turned fast, to note the corresponding flash somewhere far to the west, and Aydrian was gone, had simply winked away!
The woman took his place, looked into the mirror, and called upon her diamond again.
Xoconai rushed in, hurling javelins at her, and Aoleyn reflexively closed her eyes and cried out.
But no missiles struck her, and she opened her eyes to see Aydrian standing over another fallen enemy. He had come into this place, this far-distant pyramid, ready to fight—and that was a good thing, it seemed.
The two rushed to the door of the pyramid, glancing about, locating the other pyramids in this second xoconai camp—a camp that was far from the front lines, far from St.-Mere-Abelle, and far from alert.
* * *
At the same time that Aoleyn and Aydrian were charging into one of the pyramids outside of St.-Mere-Abelle, their two monk companions were moving quickly to the other.
Thaddius let Elysant lead the way in, while he focused on the gems in his staff, particularly the diamond he would need to facilitate the teleportation. He watched the woman charge in through the opening, then gasped as enemies came at her left and right, an ambush waiting just inside.
Elysant dove into a forward roll and then came up quickly, spinning about, her stone staff sweeping across to drive the attackers back. Thaddius started to yell out to her, noting another figure creeping up at her from the shadows deep within the wood-and-stone structure.
He didn’t need to yell, though, and even managed a bit of a grin, as his feisty friend brought her swing up short and pulled the staff back in close, planting the end and using it to vault into the air, throwing herself up horizontally and double-kicking behind her.
She took a hit from a macana, but nothing too serious it seemed. In return, she caught the approaching xoconai solidly with both feet, sending him flying back into the darkness.
How that fighting monk could move! As much as he loved falling into the magic of the Ring Stones, Thaddius wished that he could twist and turn his body with such grace and power.
His thoughts of Elysant disappeared, though, as a lizard-riding xoconai warrior appeared over the angled sides of the pyramid, charging down for the opening. Thaddius wasn’t sure he could get in before this new foe, but he had no choice, so he lowered his head and rushed ahead.
Another enemy appeared just inside that opening, leaping forward to grapple with the thin monk. And down came the lizard and its rider.
“Sister!” he yelled, struggling with the xoconai, twisting and wriggling as the warrior tried to grab him about the throat.
Instinctively, desperately, Thaddius called to a different stone in his darkfern staff, tickling the magic, elevating the vibrations.
He got pulled aside from the entrance and lost sight of Elysant, but he heard the scuffling within, the cracking of staff and macana, the grunts of a xoconai apparently struck by the fierce monk, and then the yelp of sudden pain in Elysant’s voice.
They weren’t going to make it to—They had no way to get through.
Down came the lizard, the rider fast dismounting, diving into a roll that brought her right under Thaddius, taking his legs out from under him. Down he fell, and then the other xoconai warrior was atop him, one hand grasping and twisting the skin of his face, fingers poking for his eye, the other pinching hard on his throat, trying to get the man’s windpipe.
Thaddius fought and writhed, one hand knifing up inside the xoconai’s grip in an effort to keep the choker at bay. Just one, though, for the monk would not let go of his staff. For all his life, he knew, he could not lose the connection to those gems.
He called still to the second stone, the ruby, and felt the power within it swelling.
“Sis … Sister! Run!” he managed to scream, and then he screamed a second time, louder, when a lizard bit him on the shin.
He wanted to wait a bit longer!
Where was Elysant?
Had she gotten far enough away?
The lizard tugged to the side, and the monk lost his leverage. The xoconai upon him sat on him fully and then got both hands about the monk’s neck, choking him.
Song of the Risen God Page 38