Griffin's Destiny (29 page)

What if they’re wrong?

He could feel the horse beginning to tire, but relentlessly, Ashinji drove it forward. He knew he drew close, for he could hear the sounds of battle ahead—steel ringing against steel, shouts of anger, cries of pain. A brilliant flash of blue illuminated the dark mouth of the pass, now squirming with movement that, from this distance, looked like termites swarming from a crack in the earth.

Before he left camp, Ashinji had armed himself with a bow, a quiver of arrows, and a sword, but he doubted if he would get close enough to the fray to need any conventional weapons. He had no armor to protect his body, and no plans to do any non-magical fighting, at least not now.

He felt certain Sonoe and any other mages she had with her would be well back of the line. He planned to dismount at a distance, then move forward on foot, sticking to what cover he found, and trust he could conceal himself magically from the Nameless One. He had been practicing; when first he had approached Tono Castle, he imagined himself enshrouded by the surrounding darkness. He had walked virtually undetected through the bustling camp, and dropped his concealment only when he had located Prince Raidan.

Avoiding detection by a trained mage would be far more difficult than hiding himself from soldiers and camp servants. He had the advantage of distraction on his side, though. Sonoe was preoccupied with harrying the Soldarans. He counted on her remaining so focused on the battle that she would not detect him until it was too late.

With each passing moment, the sky grew lighter. Soon, Ashinji realized, he would lose the cover of darkness. He reined in the flagging horse, and when the animal stumbled to a halt, he vaulted to the ground and darted in among a stand of alders. A small stream gurgled past the roots of the trees. The ground ahead opened out into fallow fields covered in broad-leafed weeds and wild grasses. A dirt path ran along a drainage ditch, leading arrow-straight toward the battle.

The horse meandered out into the field and bent its head to crop the grass. Ashinji, rather than imagining himself part of the darkness, sought to merge with the landscape, to become no more than a ripple kicked up in the grass by the breeze. With that image lodged in his mind, he left the shelter of the trees and set off.

Another flash of blue light alerted him to the mages’ position, back and to the right of the epicenter of the battle. He changed course and left the path, angling across the uneven earth. Crickets chirped in the coarse clumps of grass. A ground-nesting bird, flushed from its hiding place by some unseen predator, skittered off on a low trajectory, its wings making a whirring noise as it flew. The smell of soil, still moist from the spring rains, filled his nostrils with the rich, dark scent of fecundity.

Ashinji glided along like a wisp of morning mist, silent and invisible. From over his left shoulder, the first rays of the new sun stabbed heavenward, bathing the heights with gold. The light raced down and across the valley floor toward him, putting the night’s shadows to flight. Up ahead, he could see the battle.

He spotted the black boar on gold of his father’s banner, marking the place where Lord Sen stood, directing the action. He wondered if Sadaiyo was there as well, but then decided his brother most likely stood in the thick of things, claiming his share of kills. Sadaiyo might be vicious, sadistic, and manipulative, but cowardice had never been one of his faults.

The elves held their own, at least for now. They had the advantage here at the bottleneck of the pass, where Sen could use his smaller force to maximum effectiveness. The Soldarans found themselves blocked in and pinned down just inside the cut, while withering arrow fire from the elven archers raked their position.

Ashinji didn’t know the exact battle plan, but he could guess.

Father is fighting a holding action here, in order to delay the Soldarans for a time. This must be part of some sort of ambush. There’re troops on the ridges, waiting for Father to lure the Soldarans into the trap.

So far, things seemed to be going according to plan. Ashinji had no idea when Lord Sen would give the order to retreat, but he knew he had to get to Sonoe before that happened.

He reached down to touch the bag at his belt that held the spirit box. He found it hard to believe something so small could hold an entity as powerful as the Nameless One.

But it’s not truly nameless, is it? In truth, its…no, his name will be his undoing. All I have to do is speak it.

Ashinji slowed to a halt, then hunkered down to the ground, searching with both eyesight and magical sense for the creature that wore Sonoe’s flesh. He had no trouble finding her—she glowed like fire in the fresh daylight—and he was relieved to see that she stood well apart from his father’s entourage. He began to whisper; he didn’t know why, but it just felt like the right thing to do.

“Grass, wind, earth, grass, air, earth, air,…” Cautiously, he crept forward.

He paused a stone’s throw behind the former Kirian. She stood unmoving, arms relaxed by her sides. Ashinji could not see her face, but he heard her voice, murmuring in a singsong cadence. With his own chant still on his lips, he freed the spirit box from the pouch at his waist.

Abruptly, Sonoe’s arms jerked up and twin blue fireballs exploded from her fingertips, arching high overhead to fall, spinning and sparking, amid the seething mass of humans bunched at the mouth of the pass. As the fireballs detonated among the screaming Soldarans, the concussive force of the blast hit Ashinji like a fist, not so hard that it knocked him over, but strong enough to push the breath from his lungs.

Strong enough, also, to stop his incantation.

Sonoe turned and saw him.

Her eyes, once green but now blood red, narrowed.

“You!” she hissed.

Ashinji opened the spirit box and shouted, “Shiura Onjara, I command you to leave that body and come into this vessel!”

Nothing happened.

Ashinji’s heart sank as the creature laughed—a deep, throaty, sound. He looked despairingly at the spirit box in his hands.

What did I do wrong?

“Fool!” Sonoe rasped. “Did the Kirians think I would be caught so easily? Then they are even more stupid than I thought!” Before Ashinji could react, she rushed him with unnatural swiftness, and her fingers locked around his throat like a vise. “That they sent
you
is further proof of their weakness!”

Ashinji grabbed Sonoe’s wrists and attempted to break her grip, but he might as well have tried snapping iron bands. Her fingers squeezed; his senses shredded like clouds before a strong wind.

The spirit box tumbled to the ground.

Without warning, Sonoe released him and he fell back, choking and gasping. His knees buckled and the earth rushed up to slam him in the head. As he lay helpless, the sound of multiple battle horns brayed, signaling the retreat. A great roar—the noise of many voices raised in a shout of triumph—filled the air.

Get up!
his mind screamed.
Move! You can’t stay here!

Desperately, Ashinji scrambled to his feet, dizzy and nauseous.

Where is Sonoe?

He looked around, groaning from the pain in his neck as he turned his head.

Sonoe had gone, vanished like dew at sunrise. The elven forces were in full retreat, fleeing back toward the castle.

As he bent down to retrieve the spirit box, the Soldaran army came pouring from the mouth of the pass like flood waters over a broken dam.

Shit! I’m standing right in their path!

He turned and ran.

The ground beneath him shook from the impact of thousands of pounding feet.

This is madness! I can’t outrun an army!

He staggered to a halt and swung around to face the oncoming wave. A line of cavalry raced ahead of the infantry and within moments, they would be upon him. He drew his sword and raised it, two-handed, in preparation, then began to chant.

The cavalry line reached him…and parted like water around a boulder. The horses seemed to know he stood there and swerved to avoid him, but their riders appeared oblivious to his presence. Ashinji waited until the line had almost passed, picked his target, then swung.

The human toppled over his mount’s rump and hit the ground with a rattling crash. The horse careened off at an angle, away from the advancing line. Ashinji rushed the fallen man, prepared to strike again, but the human lay sprawled in the churned earth, unmoving. A quick scan told Ashinji the man had been knocked senseless. He lowered his sword.

Even in war, even on a human, I’ll not commit murder.

He looked around for the horse. Like all good war mounts, the animal had ceased running when it sensed its rider had fallen. It stood a spear’s throw away, tail swishing. Off to his left, the first Soldaran infantry units rushed past, ignoring him.

Sheathing his sword, Ashinji approached with caution. The horse, catching his unfamiliar scent, tossed its head and whinnied.

“Easy, now. Easy,” Ashinji murmured in Soldaran. He reached out and touched the horse’s simple mind, soothing it, reassuring it as to his benign intentions. The animal lowered its head, ears drooping. When he stepped up and took hold of its reins, then swung himself into the saddle, it offered no resistance.

Ashinji sat still for a few heartbeats, extending his magical sense outward in search of any clue as to which direction Sonoe had gone. He felt nothing. Logic told him she would have followed the Alasiri forces; after all, the creature that controlled her still needed to keep up its charade, at least until it deemed the time had come to execute its spell. He had no idea when that would be, so Ashinji knew he needed to find the former Kirian, and soon, before he lost all chance to stop her.

Since the creature now appeared immune to the compulsion exerted by speaking its true name, Ashinji would have to come up with some other way of capturing it.

But how
, he thought. With no formal training, he had only his own inborn Talent and instincts to guide him.

I have to think of something…Goddess help me!

He drummed his heels against the horse’s flanks and set off at a gallop after the Soldarans.

Ashinji caught up with the lead Soldaran infantry units and galloped alongside, just out of arrow range. He did not know what the humans saw when they looked his way—a riderless cavalry horse, perhaps—but whatever they saw, none of them raised any alarm. They remained totally focused on the pursuit of Lord Sen and his troops. Ashinji tried not to think about the sheer vastness of the Soldaran force now invading the valley; he had to concentrate on finding and stopping the thing that had once been Sonoe.

The vanguard of the invading army would soon reach Tono Castle where Prince Raidan waited to spring his trap. Ashinji guessed Sonoe would make her move then.

As Sen’s force drew near, sharp blasts from horns atop the castle walls signaled that those within the fortress stood ready. Ashinji hauled back on the reins and his mount skidded to a stop. Twisting first one way, then the other, he scanned the landscape.

Damn it, where is she?

Sen had wheeled around to face the charging Soldarans.

Any moment now, the trap would be sprung.

The human foot soldiers whooped and brandished their weapons as they closed in. The cavalry couched their spears and bent low for the final charge.

From atop the highest battlement of the castle, a single, sustained horn blast sounded. A heartbeat later, massive fireballs, some blue, others white, rained down from the rocky ridgelines. They fell amongst the Soldarans and detonated with terrible force, flinging the bodies of men and horses high into the air. The humans’ cries of triumph morphed into screams of pain and terror.

At the same time, the elven forces hidden among the crags to either side of the castle poured down the slopes in a headlong plunge to the valley floor. The archers reached the flats first and they immediately launched a deadly hail of arrows into the flanks of the invaders. Ashinji narrowly missed getting skewered as he flung himself off the horse to the ground. Instinctively, he threw up a protective magical shield around him, just in time to deflect another rain of arrows. He could do nothing for the horse. It went down in a tangle of thrashing limbs, pierced by at least a half-dozen shafts.

I’ve no training for this!
Ashinji thought as he realized he had no idea how to maintain the protective shield for longer than a heartbeat or two. Fear began to scratch at the back of his mind, but he pushed it aside.

No! I can’t let anything distract me!

The elven forces were almost upon him, and the Soldarans had re-organized and braced themselves to meet the new threat.

Lord Sen charged just as the massive gates of the castle swung open to allow the troops within to rush out. Simultaneously, the portion of the elven army hidden at the rear of the fortress streamed to the front on either side.

The Soldarans were surrounded.

Ashinji’s heart sank.

Goddess, we’re so badly outnumbered! How are we ever going to drive the Soldarans out?

Despite the fact that the elves’ plan had worked to perfection, Ashinji feared only a miracle could save them now.