| |
They ran. A single stride of the monster covered several feet. They had to stay out of reach.
Desora slowed as she looked over her shoulder, ensuring that the monster followed. It did, but not before it ripped apart another building and shredded a fence in its way.
Brax, Challoch, and the rangers ran with them, bringing weapons useless against the monster.
Tall grass covered the clear space north of the village. A winter pasturage, to keep the animals close when predators came out of the mountains to the north and the forests both east and west. In summer the far fields and high meadows fed the animals.
As they plowed through the tall grasses, a bird lifted from its hide. A kite, climbing to the sky with heavy flaps of its wings. It gave a piercing piping whistle. Watching it, Desora stumbled. Not again. The kite wheeled overhead, then it soared east, toward the Wilding.
Horst grabbed her arm and dragged her along. “Keep up. You cornered me into this, Lady. You will not die before we make our stand.”
They had nearly crossed the broad field when the monster’s thudding steps shuddered the ground beneath them.
“Stop! Stop here!”
The Kyrgy dropped her arm and whirled. Before she turned, he flung a sphere of fire. “Do it,” he barked.
She whipped around. The monster had crossed half the field. It had paused when Horst’s sphere struck, but it prepared to take another step. Those arms were reaching, extending toward them. “I need—I need—.”
“Use this.” Brax thrust his melted sword in her hand. Catching the weight, she nearly dropped it. “Can you use it?”
“Aye.” As Horst flung more spheres, Desora poured greeny power into the sword. She felt the steel, felt the iron and heat that had formed it, felt the blows of the blacksmith’s hammer. She imagined what she wanted, the acid, the crumpling ground. Elemental Earth sank deep into the metal. Then she drove the ruined blade into the ground.
The hilt shuddered and fell out of her hands.
The power tunneled into the earth, deeper and deeper, delving as the sword had penetrated, a sharp angle that sloped toward the monster.
“It’s not stopping,” Horst gasped.
She drew on Earth and shaped a rock sphere. She threw the heavy orb immediately. It crashed into the monster.
Then the ground crumpled under its blocky feet. The monster roared as it fell with the ground, into the ground.
Acidic mud plopped up and splashed as the monster sank into the hole.
Armor smoked and charred. The monster screeched.
Then it began climbing out of the acid.
“Damn it to Neotheora,” Horst swore and flung fire into the monster’s eyes.
Horses stampeded around Desora. White steeds, with long manes and tails, long strides that flowed slowly. Magical steeds. Six armored sentinels reined in the horses. Maorn Harte’s sentinels, come from Bermarck. They dismounted before her, blocking her view of the monster. The horses galloped away. The Fae whipped out their long swords and advanced toward the mud-mired monster.
“No!” Desora cried.
“No!” Horst yelled. “Stay away. Move away! Your swords will do nothing.” He darted forward and jerked a Fae’s arm. “No. This is not help. This monster is impervious to steel, even our magical steel. Only the Earth wielder can fight it.”
The Lucent Fae hesitated then separated. They lined up, three to each side, and kept their swords drawn, braced on their shoulders. As one, they looked at her, cold faces of marble, shimmering silver hair, eyes the color of forests and the sky.
Horst returned to her side. “The acid does nothing against it. Tell me you have another spell to destroy it.”
Elemental wielders didn’t use spells. He knew that. Wielders sourced the element’s power.
And the acid was the strongest destructive power she knew.
Except—.
Once again, memory opened the book from the Enclave’s archive. She saw again the page with acid pools and the stench that had killed. Then the page turned. Fire flowed down the next page. Liquid fire, like a river ... only the edges crusted into black earth. The river incinerated anything that touched it. Bones burnt and disappeared. Steel dropped in and dissolved. Armor melted. The very stones on the banks of the river caught fire, turned to liquid, and joined the fiery flow.
Desora crouched, dug her fingers into the furrow that the sword had opened, then ripped apart her hands, ripping the soil apart.
The fissure opened, deepened. The earth cracked at her starting rip, delved deep, deeper still. Acid mud bubbled up a few feet away from her, then it poured away as the ground cracked wide, deeper and deeper, to the greater depths.
Smoke broke free—not the steam of the hot acid pots. Wind blew from the west, taking away the stench of the force buried underground.
The monster slithered back into the acid mud hole. It howled and pummeled the earth. Its armor was unmarred, still grey beneath the char. Its skin was burnt as red as its eyes.
More smoke rose. Fire licked along the earth. Heat poured up, burning them even several feet away.
The new fissure reached the mud hole.
The monster howled as the acidic mud poured into the deeper fissure. The strength of the gush shifted the monster toward the liquid fire. It shrieked as it neared the heat, shrieked as it dropped into the fired river, shrieked—then the sound ended. They heard only the crackling of the molten fire, like glass crushing slowly, slowly.
Desora started forward, but Horst caught her. Brax, only a step behind, grabbed her other arm. “No. Captain Brax, see if it is dead,” the Kyrgy ordered as he towed her back from the fissure.
The ground where she’d stood was bleached pale, the tall grasses dead, sapped off all life. The grasses had also died under the others.
Brax had run to peer into the hole. He backed away carefully then came running back. The river’s intense heat had flushed his face. “It’s not there. Nothing is, only a pool of fire. A few places are crusted black.”
“Lava,” Horst said.
She hadn’t known the name.
“Close it, Lady. Close all of it. The monster is gone. We are safe.”
Repairing the Earth was more difficult than destroying it. As Brax and the sentinels watched, she gathered power from the land around them and sank its energy into the ground. She depleted the soil, sapped by shifting Earth to repair what she’d ruined in the layers below. Years would pass before anything would grow in this meadow.
Horst knelt beside her and pressed his hands to the still-growing grasses, weakened and pale. Without nutrients, they would die, but for now they survived. He must sense the changes in the deep layers of the soil, where she had closed the furrows and fissures. The liquid fire lay quiescent, deep underground. The acid mud hole lurked closer to the surface, but it was buried deeply enough that those who walked this ground would be safe.
He tapped the Earth with his hands then leaned back on his heels. “You have done well, Lady de Sora.”
She didn’t answer. She’d expended too much energy, and the land around her needed its energy to remain in the soil, not re-charge her. Time would serve for her. She might be enervated, but she could feel elemental Earth at her fingertips. That mighty power hadn’t destroyed her access to it—the way that mighty spell had burnt out her wizardry five years ago.
“They will fear you now.” He kept his voice low. She doubted Brax, standing only few feet away, would hear the Kyrgy. “The greatest wizard that ever lived did not work such magic. With your connection to Earth, you have an endless supply of power. No one can rule over you.”
“Good,” she said, voice hoarsened by weariness.
She looked around. The sentinels watched her. The rangers stood behind them, even Ivhart. Challoch must have gone into Mulgrum. The elders stood at a distance, watching.
Horst walked toward Mulgrum, and three sentinels broke away to follow him closely. He looked back and lifted a hand to her. When he saw the sentinels, his mouth twisted wryly.
To the west, a flash of light caught her attention. She saw riders coming, and she recognized the mirror-like armor reflecting sunlight. More sentinels. Maorn Harte was likely with them. He would judge all they had done.
Brax escorted her back to the village. He threatened to carry er and that kept her moving, dragging one foot after the other, that and the promise of clean sheets on a soft bed.
Challoch had found a tavern undamaged by the monster. He had a table burdened with food and ale and promised them beds for the night as well as horses for the journey tomorrow.
“Tomorrow?” she queried, almost too tired to say the word, no matter how much the ale had refreshed her.
“We ride for the Citadel tomorrow,” Brax said calmly.
Desora stared at him. That decision was upon her, before she wanted it to be.
She recalled a much earlier day, when they’d stood on the battlements, with a hard fight before them. She had turned to him and said, I love you.
Fine time to tell me, he’d retorted, with death ahead of us.
Death was behind them now. The monster killed, the sorcerer and his wyre killed, no gobbers or trolls or ogres ready to attack them.
She leaned close and caught the neckline of his tabard. “We have no battle before us now. I love you,” she whispered.
He searched her eyes. “You remember?”
“Not everything. Most things. I remember that. I loved you then. I love you now.”
He grinned, his eyes catching amber light. His arm tightened around her waist. “About time.” Then he kissed her.
A cleared throat interrupted them. Brax broke the kiss but didn’t draw back. Hot breath wafted over her face. His eyes stayed shut, as if capturing a memory.
And she knew how important that was.
Desora turned to see who had interrupted them.
In his antlered crown, Maorn Harte stood at their table. His armor reflected the amber tavern light. His pale face was coldly aloof, his leaf-green eyes bright yet unreadable. “They tell me,” he started without any greeting, “that the Kyrgy lord betrayed you in multiple ways. The Maorketh will hear of this.”
The Maorketh ruled all of Faeron. Desora hadn’t known the Fae queen also ruled the various Wildings scattered along the borders.
She blinked and wondered what to say. She would not defend Horst. More than once he had put their lives in jeopardy, especially when he rode with the sorcerer at his side. “At the end, with the monster, Lord Horst did help us.”
“The Kyrgy allied to a sorcerer. Though he be Dark Fae, all Faeron vowed never to ally with sorcery. This we do not forgive. He is banished to the Wastes.”
“Then who will rule the Wilding?”
“The Maorketh will decide.” The Maorn unbent a little. He didn’t smile at her, but his detached expression changed a little. The tavern light gleamed in his eyes. “I wish I had seen the power you wielded, Lady de Sora. The Maorketh will know of this. She will wish to speak with you.”
And judge how dangerous I am. That, Desora decided, would not happen. “Then, my lord Harte, you can report to her, when you report of Lord Horst.”
“Does the Enclave know the strength of your elemental power?”
“Earth power is always strong.” She didn’t add that the difference between her and other wielders was the extreme lengths she would go to defeat an enemy. Others could draw upon the limitless powers of their elements. They only needed to do it. Then all wielders of elements would frighten the Wizard Enclave.
“The Enclave will want to study your use of the element Earth.”
Aye, they would, but she wouldn’t let them. Brax was of the same mind, for his hand tightened on hers.
“What the Wizard Enclave wants does not matter. I am not a wizard. I have not been a wizard for five years. The Enclave does not control wielders of the elements. Therefore, the Enclave does not control me.”
Her answer didn’t affect Harte. He remained impassive as he studied her and Brax, sitting so closely together. “Will you remain here, in Mulgrum?”
“If I did, would you appoint sentinels to watch my every action, my lord Harte? No, we will not remain here.”
“Where, then, will you go? If I may be so bold to inquire.” Only his dry drawl revealed the irony of his words.
“To Iscleft Citadel,” Brax said, “to finish my term there. We have sorcerers and wyre aplenty there. Here, the battle is over.”
The Maorn nodded. “Then I wish you all speed. When I hear of great deeds in battle, I will know you fight there.”
Those words were intended to hurry them on their way. Desora, though, still had answers to gather. “My lord, what will you do with the ranger Ivhart?”
He grimaced, a true twist of his face that revealed how deeply Ivhart’s loyalty to Horst affected the Lucent Fae. “Ivhart faces judgment for disavowing his oath to me. Perchance I will send him with the Kyrgy. Fare you well, Lady de Sora. And you, Captain Brax.” He bowed then left, walking with long strides out of the tavern.
Only when the door shut behind him did the other patrons resume their conversations. Their eyes kept shifting to Desora and Brax and Challoch.
The guard saluted them with his pint. Beard scruffed, dirt on his brow and streaked on his face, he grinned, revealing strong white teeth. “For the road, then,” and he swallowed several times to drain his ale.
“We’ll need three horses,” Brax said when he’d drunk to the toast.
“Found our warhorses, captain. Got the gelding stalled near them. Pack mule as well.”
“And blanket rolls and packs filled with journey bread.”
“The cook here will stuff our saddlebags. She’ll have them in the morning. I’ll be off now, before the elders get their courage up now that the Fae lord has left.” He pushed back from the table. “If they offer coin, better take it, captain.”
“Now when did I start taking orders from you, Challoch?”
The guard grinned. “Since I started talking. In the morning,” and he gave them his back.
“I could use with a little sleep,” Brax mused.
She lifted an eyebrow. “Sleep?”
He tucked her close. “Eventually.” He drank down the last of his ale. When the pewter cup hit the table, the tavern door opened ... and the elders appeared. Brax groaned.
And Desora giggled.
