| |
There is something about a single (or in this case double?) enemy walking weaponless into an army encampment that makes everything stutter to a halt. Humans love drama. They want to see what happens next – even if there’s a possibility that they might not like what that is.
Rather than charging us and instantly killing us with their overwhelming numbers, the men and women of Ko’Torenth drew aside, creating a path for us to walk through their heavily armed ranks to the tents beyond.
So far, so good.
I tried not to study them too openly. No need to make them suspicious or defensive. But what I saw wasn’t hopeful for us. I recognized some of those Heads of House from their furtive meetings with Apeq in Ko’Koren. And I also recognized some of the Midnight Artificers. They stood around Apeq like a clutch of ducklings around their mother, long rods in their hands – weapons wrought of the souls of others.
Souls that didn’t belong to them. Souls they didn’t have the right to take.
Fury welled up inside me and I snatched at the rods with my mind, pulling the souls out of them and loosing them to return to the World of Legends. They never belonged to these power-hungry vermin.
“Your anger is showing,” Zyla whispered warningly.
I smoothed my features as I stumbled to where Apeq stood, looking at his ease. His clothing was clean and orderly. His appearance was ... kingly. After all, wasn’t that what he was here for? To prove he could be king to the people of Ko’Torenth and king over the Dominion, too?
Not while I still lived.
“Yeah! Show him!” the mimic encouraged me. It was strange that Apeq still couldn’t see the mimic. Strange and a little chilling. Where was his shadow self? Was it possible that the Apeq I spoke to was the shadow self and that the less shadowy Apeq had been left somewhere in the World of Legends?
“Yes,” my mimic said.
Whoa! Really? But I didn’t have time to explore that train of thought.
“What do you want, urchin?” Apeq asked with a flicker of cruelty playing around his twisted smile.
“To talk.”
“I’m a little busy at the moment.”
The people standing around him tittered like he was the funniest thing they’d heard all week.
“Well at least you’re keeping busy,” I said casually. “It’s good to stay busy when you’ve lost everything.”
“I don’t seem to have lost anything,” he said, and his voice betrayed that his patience was thinning.
“Except for Ko’Torenth. I went ahead and scooped that up,” I said. I pulled the scarf from around my head, letting the bright crown flare in the light. “Seeing as I’m the Ko’roi.”
That caused a stir in the Heads of House.
I looked over at them. “If you return home now, you’re welcome to keep your houses under my rule.” Some of them laughed, but not all of them. It was the nervous ones that I fixed with a steady gaze. “I’ll replace any of you who don’t leave right now with a new House of my choosing.”
There were some shuffling feet, but Apeq barked a laugh.
“Well, you’re good at one thing, boy. Lies. Threats and lies.”
“That’s two things,” I said with a cocky grin. “Three if you count stopping golems in their tracks.”
“Four if you count being a hero,” Zyla said softly and her words made my heart leap.
“I don’t see golems stopped in their tracks,” Apeq said, pointing up to where the wolf golems were rushing over the walls of Questan. “In fact, I think they’re winning.”
And now was the time for my big gamble. I hadn’t relly been planning it – in fact, I hadn’t been sure what I was going to do when I got this far, but it came to me – a sudden inspiration like a gift from the heavens dropping straight into my open mind.
I swallowed, fighting the nausea swirling in my belly. If I was wrong about this, if it was the wrong choice ... but I couldn’t be wrong. There were children up there counting on me. Children just like the ones I’d saved in Estabis. Children who would have no one to save them now if it turned out that I had misjudged.
“Last chance,” I told the Heads of Houses. They didn’t move, their eyes fixed on Apeq.
I’d better be right about this.
I concentrated as hard as I could and I pulled, sucking at every golem at once and tugging at their souls, fighting the writhing wave of them. It felt almost as if Gran was there pulling with me, and the ancestors who had chosen me as Ko’roi, and the people who had fallen defending Estabis, and the souls I’d already sent back to their rest, as if Karillion and Nelmper pulled with us and all the fallen dragons who had fought and died for the people of Estabis pulled, too. We pulled with all our might.
The wolf-golems ground to a halt and the valley was suddenly quiet, save for the sound of flying golems falling from the air and dashing to crumpled messes on the ground below.
It had worked.
I swayed, my vision blurring as Zyla grabbed me, bearing all my weight in her small arms. I was going to black out.
No! Not yet! Not here!
Take my strength!
And then, like I’d rested a full night, I shook myself, standing on my own feet.
Saboraak! My dragon! How in the world had she done that?
Remember when you wondered if we were really bound by magic? Apparently, we are.