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I didn’t realize that I’d frozen in place until I felt Gran’s hands shaking me.
“Now’s not the time for a metaphysical panic, Ko’roi. You have more power than you can handle. It happens. Get over it and move on.”
What did that even mean? I wasn’t thinking about power. My mind was filled with horror over what I’d just done. I – Tor Winesping – was not a killer. I was a trickster and sometimes a liar and most definitely a fool, but I was no killer. And yet there were six men on the ground in a knot at my feet that said otherwise. I wasn’t even certain about how I’d done it.
Images of other men dead in Vanika, burnt and curled up in the pain they’d felt as they died flashed through my mind. They were replaced by other memories – faces of men as they fell, fighting on the walls of Estabis, faces of men already fallen in the long halls of the Castel keep in Estabis City.
“For every moment you take thinking about this, you lose more of the battle. Look at the city,” Gran said.
I blinked back to where we were.
In the distance, the city swayed as the teams of golems pulled at it. I’d lost my hold on them in my panic at what I had done.
“We will deal with this. Just not yet.”
Deal with what? The loss of human life? This wasn’t something you ‘dealt with’ like losing a button or getting a hole in your boot.
“But seriously, did you really think you’d enter a war and come out on the other side without killing people?” my mimic mocked.
I thought that I’d at least know they were bad.
“Ha! Well, I suppose you can ask. ‘Please, mister, while you’re trying to cut my throat, can you tell me – are you a bad person?’” He scoffed. “Where do I sign up to be someone else’s shadow?”
He was stuck with me and my conscience.
“Stuck is the word, alright. No matter how much I try to wear it away it sticks around ...” the mimic said, but I ignored him, steeling myself for what was to come.
I had a dragon who was unresponsive, a friend who had vanished like a puff of smoke in a metaphysical incident, a city to save, and a nation to take over. I’d have to mourn the cooks and farriers later.
“That’s the spirit.”
And if I was lucky, I’d lose this mimic along the way.
“Lead on, Gran,” I said, fumbling with my mind to gain control of the golems again.
We were in a mass of boulders at the foot of the hills that the dragons were on. I couldn’t see them – not with so many boulders in the way, but if we could just press on, they weren’t too far. Through the eyes of the golems there, I could see blurry shapes of Magikas running away, their robes and hair on fire. Some of the humans had escaped the chains and were helping the others. Their forms were blurry.
Gran pushed me forward and I responded to her urgings. “Not much farther, Tor. Come on!”
In the distance, I wrestled a golem back from Apeq – just one, but this time, I sucked his soul away. I hadn’t realized I could do that! I sent it speeding toward the Doorway of Heavens. It must be the ring around my neck. It amplified my power. It let me send them free without needing to be close enough to sing the song.
I focused on finding a golem in another group. If nothing else, the teams would be hampered by motionless golems until they could unhitch them.
There!
I focused, ripping the soul from the golem to send it back to the World of Legends. It was a painstaking process. The life in the golems felt – slippery, if that was the right word. Hard to hold or pull. I mumbled to myself as we climbed.
“We’re hidden here in the boulders,” Gran was saying. “Keep us in them for as long as you can, Stef. You’re doing well. Keep it up.”
And with her encouragement, we slogged on, my eyes glazed over as I worked on pulling the souls free of the golems in the valley below, one at a time. One at a time.
I needed to get to where they could hear my song. Dealing with them individually was simply not enough.
I must have said that out loud because Gran was crooning, “We’ll get to that, Tor. One thing at a time. Follow Stef’s steps, that’s right. Here we go, I think after this boulder we’ll be in the clear again. What do you see, Stef?”
“Not far now, Gran.” Stef peered around the boulder and then she was motioning us forward, staff held at the ready.
I fought a persistent soul. Did it want to stay in the golem? It slipped and slid through my fingers like a buttered eel.
“Nothing likes to be forced,” my mimic said wryly. “I’ve noticed that you tend to squirm when anyone is dragging you anywhere. Try being more appealing. Make them want to leave the golem.”
That’s what the song was for. But I was too far away to entice them with the sweet strains of the Song of the Dead. I needed to use what I had.
“Here’s our chance!” Stef said and then Gran was shoving me forward and we were running from the boulders out onto the hillside.
Chaos reigned over the hills. Magikas flung their magenta and green fireballs – why was it always just those two colors? – while Tachril flamed them from above. He was okay!
Beside him, Isitdor roared, snatching a fleeing Magika from the ground and flinging him with a mighty shake of his massive head. The Magika’s scream disappeared as he flew past the boulders to the fields beyond.
But the people who had been tied up were in trouble. My golems stood around them, motionless, but the soldiers and Magikas who had imprisoned them ran between the golems, seeking the people bound to those dragons. The looks on their faces weren’t looks of fear. I moved one of the golems suddenly, crushing a soldier between him and the wolf golem beside him. I didn’t know if he lived or died, but I left the golem there as I grabbed another golem and charged him at a second soldier as he raised his sword to kill one of the humans trussed on the ground. The wolf golem leapt forward, snatching the soldier up in his jaws and leaping past into the hills beyond.
In the chaos, it was hard to count heads or see specifics. Every time I thought I might see Saboraak, someone moved in front of my view. I counted four dragons in the air. One appeared to be hurt. I counted four humans trussed on the ground and three standing. I counted two oosquer, dead. Their throats slit where they lay trussed in chains.
But there was so much I wasn’t seeing. Frustrated, I ran on, moving golems as I could to block the Magikas and soldiers from attacking the tiny band of humans as they tried to free their fellows. One Magika raised his hands, fireballs leaping from them to smash into my golem’s chest, but fire didn’t stop golems. The wolf golem swept him up as easily as a dog scoops up a bone, running down the hill like he was playing with his prize.
I didn’t have the time to direct them after I used them to clear the path. I had to trust that they would stop eventually.
“They probably won’t. There will be wild golems running around with the bones of dead Magikas in their mouths for years to come,” my mimic said wryly. He seemed to think his grisly joke was funny. There was nothing funny about death.
And then we were finally in among the humans.
“Tor!” Nostar said, looking up from where he fought the chains around Letina. They were locked with heartstone. I laid a hand on them and the lock fell away.
“What happened?” I asked, hurrying to where Janes was also locked in place. Lenora, streaked in mud, was trying to free him.
“One of the Kav’ai was a traitor,” Lenora said, leaning back with a look of relief as I broke the heartstone lock holding Janes. “He betrayed us into the hands of the enemy. We had warned Questan and were on our way to Dominion City when we were set upon by dragons and Magikas. They pulled us from the sky and bound us and delivered us over to the army here. The other Kav’ai said he had also betrayed his people at a place called Kav’ru.”
So that was how Shabren had known to look for us there!
I moved to help Devind and Jordil, breaking their locks as Lenora pulled them free of the chains.
“Thanks, Tor,” Devind said quietly.
“Where is Karillion?” I asked Nostar. The man beside him was dressed in Estabis colors – one of the soldiers who had fled with Lenora.
“Dead,” Nostar said, his face wooden as he used the chain he’d been tied with to deflect the attack of a soldier who darted toward us.
“The Kav’ai?” I asked, waking one of the golems up to attack the four men who were racing toward us from behind the first soldier. My golem batted the first one away like an annoyance and rushed after a second.
“Dead,” Nostar said, ducking a sword swipe. Stef smacked his attacker in the temple with her staff and he fell to the ground. Jordil snatched up his sword, but the threat was past. My golem had run down or chased off the other attackers.
“The other soldiers who fled with Lenora?”
“Killed when we were ambushed.”
I nodded, my own expression hardening. I needed to find Saboraak. The soldiers attacking us right now were just ragged groups from the army’s flanks, but they were already pulling together an organized counter-attack and unless we could group up, we’d all be taken captive again.
“I need to get to Saboraak,” I said, rushing forward, shoving past the immobile forms of the golems. I’d set them in a ring around the humans to help keep the humans safe, but now they stood between me and my dragon. I couldn’t even catch a glimpse of her through their heavy bodies and thick legs. I could ride one, perhaps. But I didn’t want to stop and mount it. I needed to get to Saboraak, and I needed to get to her now.
I ignored the protests and cries from the people behind me, as I rushed past the golems. I needed to find her – to even just catch a glimpse. It worried me that she hadn’t spoken to me yet.