Light the Reign (The Forgotten: Book 3) (25 page)

“And just what is her interpretation of the
events?” she asked warily.

“That the cleansing of the Dark King’s taint
from the world means that the bloodbeasts will be set upon the Lost
Ones to wipe them out. Not that we will destroy them as our
ancestors could not.” He looked imploringly into her eyes. “Could I
have made you into the chosen one of the legend? I knew all about
them, had studied each of the tribes’ versions. I brought Petra
knowing she would be invaluable; I pushed you to begin this journey
in the first place. What if Kali is right and the legend is now
going to wipe out all of humanity for my error?”

“I’ve never put much stock into legends,”
Katya lied. Her own prophecy, that those she cherished would suffer
until she found her other half had proved to be true. Then again,
this had been delivered by the Oracle as the Word from the Three.
Not some tribal superstition. Perhaps by helping to save the world
once again and finally cleanse the world of the Dark King’s taint
would help her fulfill the other half of her prophecy – that her
soul was marred by evils, but could be saved. That her fate was
tied with the world’s. Well, it certainly seemed to be that way
again. “I don’t care what the legends may or may not say. We will
stop the bloodbeasts. And I don’t see that there’s any reason I
have to do it alone. Your legend might say that the one who takes
the stones has to slay the beasts herself, but I’m no one of
legend, and I want as many people with me as I can gather. Can I
count on all of you?” she asked, sending a questioning look out to
each of the tribe’s leaders.

None were overly eager to come forward to
help her fight a horde of bloodbeasts newly released from a
hundreds-of-years-old prison. Finally, it was Slade that stood
forward.

“The Myaamia will fight with you,” he said
firmly.

The Dena’ina leader followed his lead. “And
the Dena’ina,” he stated, nodding his head. He seemed to be
weighing the truth behind her words, and decided that it was their
best hope of survival.

One by one, the other leaders came
forward.

“Will we really be able to defeat them?” the
Dakelh leader asked. “Even with the five tribes working together,
there are only so many of us.”

Katya grinned at them. “You are forgetting
all the people of the Lost Lands as you call them. They will be
willing to come and help as well. We are all in this together.”

The leaders of the tribes all wore
taken-aback expressions. Some were worse than others. The Kanza
leader looked almost sick to his stomach at having to accept help
from the Lost Ones. The Dakelh just looked thoughtful.

Katya was confident. With everyone against
the bloodbeasts, how could they lose? “We should go scout the area
and decide where best to take them would be. Do we know where Kali
went?”

The Dena’ina leader shook his head. “She was
well prepared for the beasts to attack her, so she had protection
stones all around. And since we were taken by surprise that she was
there at all, she escaped before we could subdue her.”

They transported back to the place that the
leaders had witnessed the opening, from a hill far above where the
great hole had opened in the ground. Katya’s confidence wavered
slightly as she saw what was below them.

She raised an eyebrow. There were hundreds of
beasts roaming the plain below. They ranged in sizes and took on
shapes of every known creature and many unknown ones. At the
moment, they seemed to be fighting amongst one another, and only a
few were yet venturing beyond their crater of earth. The ones that
were starting off were all going in the same direction, however.
Towards Gelendan.

“Kali said they would be attracted to their
maker,” the Dena’ina leader commented, following her gaze to the
ones trickling south at an ever increasing pace.

“Alright,” Katya assumed a businesslike tone,
“who knows this area well enough to give us a guess as to how long
it might take them to reach the border?”

Slade took a hesitant step forward, watching
her as though she might bite his head off any second. His new
contriteness was rather annoying. She was not about to forgive him
his betrayal. She widened her eyes in a sudden movement and jerked
a tiny bit towards him threateningly.

He flinched away. “I would estimate it will
take them no more than five days to reach the edge of the Lost
Lands. They will go by both the Myaamia and the Gwich’in, though
depending on how far they spread out, they might not hit either
one.”

Katya was silent a moment, and she chewed her
lip. It was a habit she had picked up trying to emulate emotion,
and she found that once she started, it was hard to stop. “That
doesn’t give us much time. I know that Layna and Gryffon need to
take care of the outbreak that Kali caused in Treymayne, but given
how well the cure worked in the palace, that shouldn’t take more
than a day. They should be able to transport up here by tomorrow
night or the day after at the latest.”

“Won’t they be exhausted after all those
transports?” scoffed the Kanza leader, “What good will they do us
then?”

“You don’t know Layna and Gryffon,” Katya
informed him smugly. “You were lucky to have overcome them with the
combined magic of all the tribes together.”

He didn’t comment, but continued to stare
skeptically at her. It didn’t matter, she wasn’t about to waste
breath trying to convince the stubborn man. He would see for
himself soon enough.

She turned back to Slade. “Are there any
areas then that they’ll be in about two to three days from now that
we could use to our advantage?”

“I think so-” he started, but couldn’t
finished his sentence as something small and fast whipped out of
the brush and straight towards him.

A flaming serpent, only about three feet
long, covered in nasty-looking spikes, and zooming through the air
with bat-like wings. The creature let out a high-pitched whine
which soon crescendoed into a pitch that their human ears couldn’t
detect.

Unfortunately, it appeared that others of its
kind could hear it, and soon they were surrounded by four of the
feisty little hellions. They slithered through the air, and in and
out of the tight group of people, who drew their weapons and
readied spells to fling at them.

She felt the familiar tightness of Marak on
her arm as she drew her knives from their hiding spots and let one
fly into the nearest creature.

It let out a shriek as it died, and caused
the other three to wind around one another in sympathetic agony.
This turned out to be a mistake on their part as they had five
mages ready to launch spells at them as soon as they presented a
target. Which the roiling ball of flying snakes conveniently
provided.

The five spells hit them simultaneously, and
these didn’t even get the chance to emit their final wail. They
burst apart and the pieces fell to the ground, fluttering in the
light wind.

They all watched until the last of it had hit
the dirt. Katya looked up and smiled.

“Four down. Some-odd hundred to go.”

CHAPTER 14

Layna awoke the next morning much refreshed.
Though the news from Katya had worried her immensely, her
exhaustion had overtaken her long before she could work up too much
anxiety over it. As the morning wore on, it was easier and easier
to listen to Gryffon’s optimistic suggestion that perhaps nothing
had come of the warning after all. She had, he pointed out,
bothered them late at night to let them know of the danger. It
seemed likely that she would have contacted them again had it
turned into anything worse.

Regardless, they still had the issue of
making sure that the cure spread throughout the city, and making
sure that it made it to the outbreak in Treymayne. Just as
spreading the chokeroot to all of their citizens had proved
difficult, she was now worried that it wouldn’t spread to all of
its citizens.

“But the original curse spread to all of
them, didn’t it?” Gryffon said. “The chokeroot didn’t get out to
everyone because it depended on them actually coming to us to get
it.”

She cocked her head to the side in a
half-nod. “That’s true,” she granted him, “but the majority of it
also spread while no one was the wiser. Now that everyone is
worried about it, they’ve all shut themselves in their homes. Not
that it matters anymore as far as getting infected – any who can
get it have gotten it – but also out of fear of the Bricrui. And
for that, I really can’t blame them. If I was still just a maid, I
would probably be at home covering my head in a blanket
somewhere.”

“I highly doubt that,” Gryffon rebuffed her.
“You have far too much of an inquisitive nature. And no common
sense sometimes.” He grinned at her and gave her a quick kiss to
cut off any response she may have had to the remark.

They finished their morning routine and
wolfed down the breakfast that had been left for them, and made
their way to the Council chambers. They would leave the task of
organizing the spread the cure in the city to the Council, while
they ensured its taking hold in Treymayne.

Already they had dozens of volunteers from
the cured in the infirmary to go out into the city and ‘infect’
people with the new anti-curse. It heartened Layna to hear that so
many people were willing to come together and help solve the
crisis. Though there had been a few people who had polluted her
faith in the goodness of her people, like Telvani and the Bricrui
fights, times like these reminded her of what her people were truly
like. Layna was still over-whelmed by the amount of support and
thanks they had showered upon them and Phoenix, even knowing that
it was them who caused it.

“It wasn’t Phoenix or you who have caused any
of this,” Gryffon said exasperatedly when she voiced these
thoughts. “It is the Forgotten tribes who made the mistake of
listening to a crazy evil person that began this mess. And the mess
before this one was due to the fact that we mistakenly trusted a
crazy evil person.” He smiled at her dryly. “Hopefully, when this
is all over, we can stop with the whole crazy evil person business
and just all get along.”

“I hope so,” Layna sighed. “It would be nice
to actually get to enjoy some of the perks that supposedly come
with being a Queen. So far, I haven’t had the pleasure of indulging
in many of them.”

“Well, good,” Gryffon poked at her, “I don’t
want you becoming all soft. I have to keep my Queen on her
toes.”

“Ha ha.” She kissed him again. They had
reached the Council chambers and she regretfully pulled away. She
pulled open the door and they went in together, Layna taking a deep
breath before doing so.

When they had the Treymayne Ieldran in the
mirror, they relayed the good news. The entire Council burst into
applause, extremely unlike them, revealing just how much strain
everyone had been under.

They agreed to a course of action to spread
the cure and arranged for her and Gryffon to go to Treymayne with
Phoenix to make sure that it spread as quickly as possible there as
well. Layna felt a guilty twinge every time she thought of what
they were taking away from her daughter. Hopefully someday she
would forgive them.

They decided that rather than transport
directly into the zone where Heinrich had started the disease and
then let it loose, they would travel in by horse. The Ieldran was
becoming more and more supportive of the merger between them as
time wore on, and they agreed that it was time to start convincing
their populace as well. Having Phoenix ride through healing people
before their very eyes would go a long ways towards accomplishing
this goal. It made Layna a little nervous, parading her baby around
the countryside. Just as they had no choice but to sacrifice her
talent, it really was necessary to cement their loyalty to her,
both for the sake of the merger, as well as her eventual rule. Who
knew what problems the lack of talent might cause, but if she had
already won the hearts of the people, there would be nothing to
worry about.

The Council insisted upon an amount of
fanfare that made Layna tap her toes with impatience. There were
lives at stake. Every second could count, the difference between
life and death for some of the infected could be a matters of
moments. She tried to hurry them along, but to no avail. The
success made them cocky and they let thoughts of how such a parade
could benefit Gelendan rather than focus on the real purpose of the
trip: To save the Bricrui in Treymayne.

Soon – though not soon enough for her – they
were on their way. Layna had been stuffed into one of her most
fancy traveling dresses and she felt as though she might pass out
from lack of breath, the corset was so tight. She was not used to
wearing one from her days as a maid, and it took some practice to
be able to breathe while wearing one. It was a good thing that her
magic had come back, otherwise she would have felt extremely
vulnerable.

As it was, she kept an eagle’s eye on
Phoenix, never letting her out of her sight, even when Gryffon was
parading her through the crowd. As for him, he had cleaned up
pretty nice himself, and though she always kept tabs on Phoenix at
the same time, found herself drawn to admire just how handsome a
man he was.

At first, the effects of their parade was
more curiosity than anything, there weren’t any of the infected
this far out, so the passers-by just wanted to know what all the
fuss was about. Announcing that they were on their way to cure the
Bricrui did get a response, but without the accompanying
demonstration, it didn’t have quite the same effect. It did,
however, garner them quite a following.

As they moved farther in, towards the area
where it had been started, they started to come across some of the
infected. The results were similar to those they’d witnessed in the
infirmary. A weight Layna hadn’t realized had been there until now
lifted from her shoulders. She had been half-worried that it had
been a fluke, and that it wouldn’t really spread, or that Phoenix’s
cure would ‘stop working’.