The second enemy came back at him, grabbing at the staff. Thaddius responded by grabbing it with both hands, but that, of course, only allowed the warrior sitting atop him to squeeze harder.
The monk feared that his eyes would simply pop out of his head. Black spots filled his vision, and he felt as if he were falling far, far away.
But he still felt the mounting magic, and he added to it the magic of another Ring Stone, the third set in his staff. He tried calling out for Elysant again, bidding her to flee or to come to him, for if she could get to him, he could extend the protection.
He hadn’t the time to wait for an answer, his consciousness falling away.
Brother Thaddius glowed in a white shroud of light. In their surprise, both xoconai let up for a moment, and before they could go back at him fully, a massive fireball blew out from the monk’s magical ruby. Flames rolled and swept out from Thaddius, engulfing the two xoconai and the lizard, rushing into the pyramid, lighting the wood, biting the three xoconai within.
And also, he knew, engulfing his dearest friend in the world.
It was over almost as soon as it began, the flames rolling upward and dissipating. About Thaddius, the lizard screeched and thrashed, fully ablaze, the xoconai woman thrashed on the ground, burning, and the man who had been sitting upon him was up and running, flailing his burning arms, screaming awfully.
Thaddius rolled and scrambled for the pyramid opening, gaining his feet, stumbling forward and then back as he saw the burning forms within leaping about in their desperate last movements. He tried to pick out Elysant, hoping he could throw the power of the soul stone into her and save her.
He even started inside, and only stopped when he heard a sudden cracking and groaning sound. He fell back, then felt a burst of hot wind and dust blast him in the face as the pyramid collapsed in on itself.
“Elysant,” the poor monk wailed, stumbling back for the wreckage. What could he do? He couldn’t begin to shift this rubble, and what point would there be, anyway?
His friend was surely dead.
The howls of other enemies sent Thaddius scrambling, stumbling, limping on his bitten leg. He forced himself into the other pyramid, straight to the golden mirror. With the spark of a diamond, he saw his reflection in the sheet, then saw it fading in a second sheet, one far removed from the screams and the smoke and the smell of burning flesh.
Overwhelmed, the poor monk dropped to the ground. A strong hand caught him before he went down fully, easing him to a sitting position.
“Aydrian,” he said.
“Sister Elysant?” asked Aoleyn, from the side.
Brother Thaddius stifled a sob and shook his head.
23
FASTER THAN THE SPIN OF THE WORLD
The trio executed a second flash-step, teleporting farther to the west, and then a third, without incident.
They moved out of that pyramid, creeping for the one with a mirror facing west.
“We’re beyond the river,” Aydrian whispered, looking to the north and the east, spotting the lights of two cities, which he identified as Amvoy and Palmaris.
The three fell silent suddenly and dropped low to the ground, noting a sudden flicker in the pyramid they had just departed. Out rushed a xoconai woman, another flicker showing behind her.
Out came another, this one on a lizard. Another flicker signaled more arrivals, and the first one out called for this camp to awaken.
Thaddius brought up a darkness globe, and the three melted away to the north, then turned back, staying low, behind cover, to watch the stirring hornets.
Two other pyramids had been constructed in this camp, one facing south, one west, and those, too, began to flash, this time with xoconai warriors going out.
“They’re trying to find us,” Aoleyn realized.
“They know that we entered their magical trails back near Saint-Mere-Abelle,” Aydrian agreed. “They’re chasing us, or trying to surround us, or get ahead of us.”
“And now they are,” said Thaddius. “And so we’ll be fighting with every landing henceforth.”
His claims seemed reasonable, and the three looked to each other with great concern. How would they ever get near the Ayamharas Plateau and the God Crystal if the xoconai were already moving to block?
Aoleyn noted Thaddius tapping Aydrian’s arm. She followed their gazes back to the south and saw, in the dark distance, flickers of light, like giant magical fireflies, flashing in various locations southeast, directly south, and southwest.
“They are awake to us,” Aoleyn agreed.
The sheer number of landing locations surprised all of the companions. The clever xoconai had built an intricate and interconnected transport system here. They could move their brigades with great efficiency to many locations.
“Ursal is down there,” Aydrian told them. “If the monks were to mount an attack against the conquered city, our enemies would put armies on the fields all about them, north, south, east, and west.”
“Then it’s good we’re not attacking Ursal,” Thaddius quipped.
“They know we’re in their magical road,” Aoleyn said. “We cannot go on, at least not now.”
The weight of that reality hit them all. They had covered hundreds of miles in a few great magical jumps, but they had thousands of miles yet to go.
“I cannot believe how many of these pyramids they have constructed,” Thaddius said. “If there are this many all the way back to the west, we might yet find our way through the maze. They cannot concentrate on any one.”
“There won’t be,” Aoleyn said.
“Agreed,” said Aydrian. “The xoconai are not foolish. They likely knew that we might begin using their own magic against them, as they have used ours against us. I expect that somewhere in the Wilderlands, likely near Appleby, south of the Barbacan Mountains, there will be only one or two options for us to arrive from the east. And there, in that choke point, we can expect a strong force guarding the golden mirrors.”
“Unless we are quick,” said Thaddius.
Aydrian shrugged but hardly seemed convinced. Aoleyn was more direct.
“It is already too late,” she announced. “The word is spread to Appleby, beyond Appleby. Even as we speak, it is now being relayed in Matinee, and perhaps all the way back to the lake before the sundered mountains.”
“Then we are lost,” said Thaddius.
The other two didn’t reply.
* * *
The morning sun over St.-Mere-Abelle found the monastery’s walls lined with anxious monks who had witnessed the great cacophony of celestite fireballs the previous night, and then the singular blast, made by Thaddius or Aoleyn, they believed. The anxious brothers did not know the disposition of their assault team.
Across the way, the xoconai camp was astir, collecting their dead, tending to their wounded, assessing the damage to the tents and the divine throwers, and clearing the rubble of the destroyed pyramid.
“Mictazuma,” a young mundunugu woman named Amoxt told her companions, when they lifted a heavy block and pulled it aside, revealing a broken and half-burned body.
“I will kill every human I meet,” a man said, kneeling beside the body of his dead friend. “I know that Scathmizzane is a god of mercy, but mine is no more.”
The others nodded in agreement.
Amoxt moved over and draped a blanket over the fallen Mictazuma, then stepped aside as two others scooped the body in that blanket and carried him from the pyramid’s rubble.
“Another there,” one of the searchers called out, and Amoxt led the team to what had been the center of the pyramid. The woman winced when she saw the fallen and bent golden sheet, much of it deformed and melted. She noted the outline of a leg, covered in ash, sticking out from under a heavy and charred crossbeam, and motioned for her team to begin the excavation.
Barely had they begun when Amoxt found something interesting to the side. She moved over and picked up the end of a staff, and not just any staff but one
made of smooth stone that gleamed in the morning light when she brushed the soot and ash from it.
She looked back at the body, more visible now that some of the fallen stones and beams had already been moved aside.
“A human,” she said with a sneer, and it took all of her willpower to not walk over and kick the body.
“A woman,” another said, hooking the fallen monk under the arm and pulling her up a bit, mounds of ash falling from her. “She shows no burns.”
“They have magic to protect them from their own magical flames,” Amoxt reminded. “We have seen that trick before.”
“Remarkably intact and unmarred,” said another xoconai woman, hooking the other arm and helping to pull the human upright.
“Drag her over there,” Amoxt instructed, pointing back behind her to the field beyond the burn scar. “Perhaps we’ll cut off her head and stake it, to show the humans their failure.”
The other two moved near to Amoxt, who only noticed at the last moment that the woman had opened an eye. She started to call out, but too late, as Sister Elysant, held up by the arms, grasped her bearers and flipped her feet forward, standing straight with suddenness and power. She let go immediately, hands forward, then hands back, chopping at sidhe necks left and right.
A subtle twist and turn of her arms, a wide-legged hop, locking her feet behind the leg of each bearer, and Elysant shoved them both hard and back, tripping them up.
She darted forward, her eyes looking wild and wide in the mask of ash, leaping for Amoxt.
The xoconai raised the stone staff in defense, but the attacking human grasped it and pulled, and leaped above it, snapping her head forward to slam Amoxt in the face, staggering her. Still she tried to hold on, but Elysant dropped, simply pulled her legs out from under her, and twisted as she fell, the rotation pulling the staff free from one of Amoxt’s hands.
Elysant threw one leg behind the dazed Amoxt, set the other foot out to the side, and rose fast and hard, driving her elbow into the xoconai’s chest, sending her tumbling over that trailing leg. As Amoxt fell, Elysant tugged with all her considerable strength, tearing the staff free. The woman rushed forward, hands going low on the shaft as she swung the staff like a greatsword, up and around, over and down, fending the other two, who now came at her with macanas in hand.
They were shocked and afraid, Elysant saw as they fell back, and confused—and rightly so! For how could she have survived that blast and the tumbling blocks of stone and wood?
Even Elysant didn’t know the answer to that, and she wasn’t about to question it then. Nay, she took advantage of her enemies’ hesitance, bearing forward fiercely, rotating the staff before her in a gaudy, swashbuckling manner, then catching it with her hands shoulder-width apart and thrusting it forward horizontally. She intercepted a macana swing from the woman on her left and slipped over an attempted block by the man to the right, and as soon as her stone staff cleared his block, the agile and veteran warrior, a true disciple of fighting St. Belfour, rolled her right shoulder forward and punched out with all her strength, whacking the xoconai man across the jaw.
She heard the bone crack and figured him out of the fight as he fell away with a pained shriek.
Elysant turned and leaped past him, pulling her staff in close and out to the right, then stabbing it back like a spear to the left to drive back the xoconai woman.
That woman deftly dropped her macana and grabbed the thrusting staff with both hands, a move that would have tied up a lesser warrior, or would have at least forced the human woman, whose time was running short as other xoconai realized the attack, to surrender the staff.
But Elysant went with the pull, leaping forward, reversing her grip with her back hand to drive the staff up vertically. The xoconai’s grip then worked against her, with Elysant using that as a brace to lift higher as she leaped into a forward somersault. She plowed into the surprised and off-balance xoconai woman, bowling her over backwards, landing atop her as they crashed down hard on some blocks.
Up sprang Elysant, the staff immediately put into action, swinging and stabbing, driving back the woman she had tripped, then flashing out to the side, stabbing another man in the face.
Sister Elysant felt the blessing of St. Belfour upon her, felt certain that the spirit of the legendary monk would surely approve of this small woman now wearing his robes. How she wished that she had some support here, or that she wasn’t alone in the midst of an enemy camp! How she wished she could play this out, confident that she could defeat all four of these enemies.
But no, she had to run. If she wanted any chance of surviving this day, she needed to run.
So she did, gathering her bearings and leaping and sprinting away, across the camp and onto the field, shouts and cries rising all about her.
* * *
With heavy hearts and the dreadful suspicion that they had lost any chance to get to the far west quickly, Aydrian, Thaddius, and Aoleyn made their way across the fields, traveling west and keeping the distant line of the Barbacan Mountains as their guide.
They saw the continuing flashes to the south and west, further indication that the xoconai were taking no chances here and were rushing soldiers and information back to the west to protect against an intrusion and, likely, to more fully secure every golden mirror against unwanted use.
“When I was spirit-walking on the field before the doomed monastery, I felt as if I were being pulled there fully to face the xoconai god,” Aoleyn mentioned early the next day, while the three were holed up in a shallow cave. “Perhaps there is a combination of stones that will allow me to bring my body to the spirit, a way to travel great distances.”
“That was likely the work of the xoconai god,” Aydrian replied. “And I was back at your body. It did not diminish or thin or anything else to make us believe that you were actually going there.”
“There is a Ring Stone which allows one to travel great distances instantly,” Brother Thaddius added. “Emerald. But only the most powerful would work, and they are almost unknown in the world. There are none that I know of in Saint-Mere-Abelle, and many there think the powers of the emerald no more than rumor.”
“There are such, and I have seen one,” Aydrian suddenly interjected.
“How?” asked Thaddius.
“The elves, the Touel’alfar,” said Aydrian. “They possess such a gem.”
Thaddius stared at him.
“How do we find them?” Aoleyn asked.
“It will take us a month and more to travel to the region of their hidden vale, and I do not know if they would help us at all. Their valley is guarded with powerful magic.”
“Their cousins in the south turned Talmadge away,” Thaddius reminded.
“Well, we have to try,” said Aoleyn.
“A month?” Thaddius asked. “What will be left of the world in a month? What will be left of Saint-Mere-Abelle in a month?”
Aoleyn held up her hands helplessly.
Aydrian looked to the large soul stone hanging at Aoleyn’s hip. “They are ever vigilant,” he said. “I can go there, perhaps find them.”
Aoleyn lifted the pendant out toward him and nodded. “Give me your hand,” she said. “I will use the orange gem to protect your spirit while you travel.”
Aydrian took a deep breath and clasped the pendant in one hand, gripped Aoleyn’s hand with the other. A powerful gem user in his own right, the former king, the ranger, soon exited his body, his spirit rushing out to the north and west, to the Barbacan and the area he knew to hold Andur’Blough Inninness, the home of the Touel’alfar.
He cast about, running among the trees and across the fields, spiritually calling out for the elves, for Belli’mar Juraviel, who had given him a second chance at life by taking him in after his banishment from Honce-the-Bear.
At one point, he sensed something, some flicker, like a whisper in the spirit realm, but he found nothing substantial and saw no elves.
He returned to his body, exhausted, a long
time later, and found Aoleyn still sitting before him, clutching his hand, concentrating.
“Aoleyn?” he asked repeatedly.
The woman blinked open her eyes. “Something,” she said. “There is something.”
Aydrian looked at her curiously, then both jumped and turned at a sudden cry from Brother Thaddius, who had gone to the entrance of the small cave. The monk fell back inside, fumbling with his pouch of gems.
“Sidhe?” Aydrian asked.
“Hardly that,” came a melodic voice from just outside, and a tiny figure, barely waist-high and sporting small, translucent wings that seemed more fitting for a giant dragonfly, walked up to the cave entrance.
“Lord Belli’mar,” Aydrian greeted, moving past Thaddius to stand before the leader of the Touel’alfar. “You heard my call.”
“I expected it. You are a ranger now, patrolling the western lands. It would have made me reconsider our training methods if you missed an invasion of such scale. I am surprised that you did not come to us sooner.”
“You know,” said Aoleyn.
“Of course we know.” Juraviel smiled at Aydrian. “We have rangers.”
“Then you understand why I came to you,” said Aydrian. “These enemies, the xoconai, have overrun much of Honce.”
“The humans once called them the sidhe,” the elf replied, and that set all three of the people in the cave on their heels. “Oh yes, we know them, and know them well. Once, they claimed all the lands about the Barbacan as their own. They were chased back to the far west by the goblins, who followed a demon as powerful as the one infiltrating the xoconai.”
“Cizinfozza,” Aoleyn breathed.
The elf stared at her curiously, making her uncomfortable.
“Who is this young woman who knows so much?” Juraviel asked.
“She is Aoleyn of the Usgar, a faraway tribe, who lived on a mountain that overlooked a large mountain lake,” Aydrian answered.
Juraviel nodded and smiled, and said, “Interesting,” under his breath, giving the three onlookers the distinct impression that he knew all about Loch Beag and what lay under it.
Song of the Risen God Page 39