The spectral troops stood ranked to either side of the narrow path. Those flanking the drop-off hovered in midair, while those on the opposite side melted slightly into the cliff face. They were certainly not pleasant to look at, with their sightless eyes and grim demeanors. And yet Hyam felt somehow comforted by their presence. There was a binding together of his dreams and the quest, a sense of arriving at answers to questions he had carried since long before the scrolls appeared. Such as, whether some objective might be great enough to carry him beyond the loss of magic. As he descended into this dread vale, flanked by an honor guard of ghosts, Hyam welcomed the mysteries.
Midway down the ridge, they paused on a broad plateau watered by an underground spring. The waterfall across the valley sounded much louder here, the noise resonating off the wall behind them. Hyam settled next to Joelle, the smooth rock cool against his back.
Meda hunkered down on Hyam’s other side and passed over sacks of dried fruit, nuts, and a skin of tea. “A soldier’s breakfast. Alembord, Shona, Calebs, join us.” She studied the valley floor with the tight gaze of an officer gauging enemy terrain and asked Hyam, “That mound is our destination?”
Dama huffed down by Hyam’s feet, snuffed the handful of fruit, and turned away. Hyam replied, “That is where the dragon directed me.”
“Then I’d say you, Joelle, and I should reconnoiter the terrain. Alembord should stay on guard here with Shona and the highlanders.”
“Agreed,” Hyam replied.
Alembord said, “My lady, I should—”
“Follow orders,” Meda replied.
The younger Caleb complained, “I did not come all this way to be left out of a battle!”
“No,” his grandfather said. “You came to do as you are told!”
Neither young man liked it, but when it was clear they were not protesting further, Meda said, “Let’s head out.”
Joelle tightened the shoulder scabbard holding the Milantian blade. “Dama, come.”
As they arrived at the valley base, the contingent of silent warriors split into fighting groups and spread out across the floor. Their silent alertness only added to the tension.
The route they followed was a wretched thing, a mere hint of what once had been a mighty road. The vale was a pale and dusty plain in the early light. Anywhere else, Hyam would have counted it the start of a fine day. The air was crisp but not uncomfortably cold. But down here it merely illuminated the absence of hope and life both. To either side of the road, the grass was stunted and colored a sickly orange. Not a tree interrupted the vast empty plain, not a shrub, not a gopher. Only the gigantic mound that was their destination, lumpish and scarred.
Much of the central hill had wasted away, leaving only rock and a tangled petrified forest. The uncovered limbs were massive, thick as tree trunks, and grey as old bones. The spectral forces formed a ring around the hill and did not approach.
Joelle asked, “What do we do now?”
Hyam recalled the dragon’s vantage point and replied, “Climb up.”
The top of the mound was flat as a plowed field and unevenly furrowed. Joelle and Hyam picked their way carefully, for the drops between some roots were wide enough to swallow them whole. Dama, however, loped with carefree ease.
Joelle stopped near the center, her eyes widening. Hyam asked, “What is it?”
“The power you showed me, deep in the earth. You remember?”
“By the Emporis tower. Of course. You feel it now?”
“I’m not . . . I think so. Yes. Faint. Like a taste on the wind.” She smiled. “It’s nice.”
“I’m sure.” He lingered there longer than he should have, held by the thought that hers could well have been the first smile in the Ellismere vale for centuries.
Which meant he was caught utterly off guard when the call sounded from the distant ledge.
The younger Caleb proved to have a remarkable set of lungs. Hyam, Meda, and Joelle turned together and saw the sunlight glint off the sword Alembord waved over his head. Then Dama howled, drawing them back around.
A shadow appeared where the waterfall began its long descent, one that reared and wrenched itself from the rocks. The behemoth glared into the vale, taking aim straight at where they stood. Then it lifted its head to the sunrise and bellowed. The blast filled the vale with the stench of death.
Joelle asked, “Is that your dragon?”
“No. Definitely not.” Hyam was already moving. “Call Dama to you.”
As the monster tumbled over the ledge, Hyam began casting the Milantian shield spell. The beast had a snake’s ability to roll and writhe, and fell to the valley floor as fast as an eagle on the attack.
Hyam used his blade to scour a hasty circle, racing about the mound’s perimeter. Twice he almost tumbled into the shadowy depths. Dama punctuated his footsteps with snarls. The monster landed on the valley floor with enough force to shake the entire mound.
Hyam fell flat, caught himself, and scrambled up, all the while puffing out the chant, hoping with adrenaline desperation that the shield spell had not been interrupted.
The behemoth extended six legs like fluid barrels and pummeled the earth as it raced toward them. Howling. Screeching. Raging with a ravenous fury.
The spectral warriors formed a broad phalanx of smoke and translucent swords. They clambered onto its mighty back and stabbed with their weapons. But the magic that had formed the beast offered protection from such an attack. It rolled upon the earth, cast them aside, screamed its bloodlust, and headed for the mound.
But the warriors’ attack granted Hyam the time necessary to complete his unsteady course. His blade scoured the last roots and rocks. He leapt over the final gap, trailing over shadowy air. Their lives depended upon the shield.
He completed the final flourish just as the beast scaled the mount.
The monster slammed into the shield, then tumbled back to the base. The impact caused the entire root system to vibrate like a tuning of the harmonies of doom. Hyam was knocked flat again. He was separated from Joelle by less than five paces, but it might as well have been a thousand. He wrapped his arms and legs around a root and clung to the sunlight.
Somehow Meda managed to hold to her feet. Both Joelle and Dama, however, were flipped off their perches. Dama disappeared into the cavernous root system. Joelle clutched to a handhold and shrieked, “Hyam!”
He clawed his way across the distance as the monster thundered back up the terraced rise, bellowing with the lust for fresh blood. “Take my hand!”
She grabbed and clambered her way back up top just as the fiend hammered the shield once more. Meda stepped back and almost fell into another gap, but managed to right herself. The beast slammed into the invisible wall a third time, but this time they were ready.
From somewhere beneath Hyam’s feet, the wolfhound howled. In the far distance, Alembord and Shona and the younger Caleb drew blades and raced down to offer what aid they could. Their approach only added to Hyam’s need for haste, for he knew with utter certainty they sped toward their doom.
The monster resembled nothing Hyam had ever seen or heard of. The legs were barrel-like stumps that ended in fan-shaped claws. The hide was mottled and hairless, a crude pattern of orangish green. Its head was by far the most fearsome component. Six furious eyes rimmed a crown of thick bone. A trio of nostrils smoldered a putrid fume. The being had two mouths, one inside the other, that opened like alternating petals of a flesh-eating bloom. The six triangular lips were rimmed with teeth the length of Hyam’s sword. The fiend roared and clawed the shield and roared again.
Joelle searched through an opening in the roots, then called, “Dama is too deep to reach!”
It was one thing to tell himself the shield protected them, and another thing entirely to turn his back on the behemoth. Yet that is what he did, carefully making his way across the web of petrified roots, following the wolfhound’s snarls.
Meda cried, “The beast tracks you!”
Hyam realized it was so. The fiend rounded the crest so as to keep its head aimed at him. Hyam dropped to his belly and leaned into the crevice. Far below he could hear Dama snarling and scrambling. It sounded to Hyam as though the dog was actually moving away from them, but with the beast’s bellows he could not be certain of anything other than the fact that the wolfhound would have to wait. Which was a shame, because Dama was a most ferocious ally.
When he rose to his feet, he turned and waved to Alembord, gesturing them to hold back. Meda came up beside him and did the same. Only when they stopped did Hyam return his attention to the beast.
Joelle called, “What do we do?”
He had only one idea. He leaned in close to the two women and yelled, “Find two gaps on opposite sides. You both need footholds so you can come up fast. I’ll act as the lure.”
“Hyam, no—”
“Listen! You have the Milantian blade. I’ll break the shield, dive into a third hold, and stab up. If the beast comes after me, both of you go on the attack.”
Fear turned Joelle’s gaze liquid. “What if it can get to you?”
“The roots are like stone.” Meda’s sweat-streaked face was grim with anticipation. “It’s a good plan.”
Hyam said, “I’ll use a crevasse too narrow for the claws to reach in.”
Joelle gave the fiend another look, her terror clearly mounting. Hyam knew he had to move now, before she froze. He clenched her tight.
Joelle’s face felt hot against his cheek, her breath molten as she shouted into his ear about love and safety.
He released her and yelled, “Stab once, stab deep, then duck back down!”
Joelle glanced at Meda and must have found what she needed to tighten into the warrior mage who had been forged in flames all her own. It gave him the confidence to yell, “We will do this and we will walk away!”