Priest (Ratcatchers Book 1) (33 page)

“You are a man of fell insight, Arrogate.” Taethan said for the second time. “If your judgment weighs so heavily on me, how much more heavily it must weigh on you.”

“This isn’t about me.”

“It is as much about thou as I,” Taethan said, shaking his head. “I hope you pass your test.”

“What are you talking about? I didn’t have anything to do with Kavalen.”

“Is it not plain? We are being tested you and I. We have each offended our god, betrayed our friends and our oaths. There must be a reckoning before absolution. The order was my test. I have already failed, I fear. For the sake of us all I hope that you pass your test.”

“Which is?” Heden asked, afraid of the answer.

Taethan looked at him with a mixture of sadness and affection.

“Me.”

Heden was speechless.

They stood there by the lake for some time. Taethan taking it all in. Meditating on the perfect beauty of the waters and the forest and the sun and the sky. Heden just staring at him.

“I…” Heden opened his mouth to speak, and heard a terrible noise.

It was the sound of thunder far off, but there were no clouds in the sky. It came again. Heden remembered the giant. Were they under attack?

Again, the thunder. And this time the whole surface of the lake, miles across, rippled with it. The water flooded up to them, soaking them up to their knees before rushing back out. They backed away from the lake.

Taethan’s eyes were wild, he was searching the tree line.

The pattern of the explosive sounds was irregular. Inhuman. Six heavy explosions in rapid but uneven succession, then a pause. Then the pattern repeated.

The trees deep in the forest to the west swayed, something was looming over them. Something larger than the massive trees, two hundred feet high. Heden’s heart beat rapidly. The sound was becoming deafening. He was starting to panic, he felt it creep over his skin and clutch at his hammering heart.

“I thought you said no one would attack us here!” Heden shouted over the din. The sound suddenly stopped.

Taethan turned and gave Heden a look. He drew his sword.

“We may be in trouble,” he admitted.

The creature loomed over the trees. It had to be close to three hundred feet high. Inarguably the largest creature Heden had ever seen. There was, he had to admit, a kind of thrill in seeing something new. And feeling frightened for the first time in years.

“What is it?!” Heden asked.

“It would not come here but to find us!” Taethan said. “I fear I have led us both to our deaths, Arrogate!” He had his shield and sword at the ready. Heden wondered what possible use they could be.

The trees bent and then snapped in explosions of wood and sap. Whatever it was, it stepped out from the forest.

It was made of vines and thorns and trees. Mostly thorns. It was like the forest come alive. It had six legs and a massive body with a short neck and eyeless dog-like head. Its head alone was a large as the whole priory.

Taethan stared up at the thing in a kind of awe.

The creature’s head turned this way and that, orienting on what, Heden didn’t know. Until it faced Heden and Taethan and its mouth opened and the thing convulsed like it was shouting. There was no sound. It was still at least a mile away.

Heden watched as the sheer force of the creature’s report caused the surface of the lake to ripple outward. When the bow of the disturbance reached Heden and Taethan, they heard a clarion call wash over them. Like the sound of a thousand trumpets blowing. It blew Heden and Taethan’s hair back and smelled of bark and flowers.

Heden recognized the sound.

“That’s a Celestial horn,” Heden said. The elves sounded it before battle, but this was a hundred times louder. He turned to Taethan, grabbed the man, tried to shake him and make him forget his awe.

“Why is that thing sounding the battle call of the Sky Elves?”

“It is an Yllindyr!” Taethan said.

“An…” Heden translated in his head. It meant ‘lifedeath’ but life in the sense of the place you lived. And death in the sense of ‘an assault.’ Heden had never heard the proper term before, nor seen one, but he knew the Celestials made such things. He knew they were large, but had no idea how large.

“It’s an Elven siege engine?” Heden said.

“Aye,” Taethan said, bracing himself for battle.

Heden stared at the thing and for a moment could not maintain his terror. He sighed and his face betrayed his exhaustion.
This fucking forest

“Typical,” he said.

“What?” Taethan called out.

“Why aren’t we running?” Heden asked, the terror returning.

The creature began to walk forward on its six legs. The ground shook terribly. It stepped once in the lake, but then pulled its foot out as though the water burned it. It was absurdly fast for something so massive. Then it continued towards the knight and the Arrogate.

“We could not outrun it. And after it devours us, it would head to the keep. The urmen must be driving it south.”

“Okay,” Heden said, looking around. “So what do we do?”

“Do you have a shield?” Taethan asked. He was looking warily at the siege engine as though he might have to leap aside at any moment, in spite of the fact that the thing was still half a mile away and so big there was no reasonable way to evade it.

“No!” Heden said.

“That is unfortunate,” Taethan said.

Heden grabbed his pack and opened it, wondering if there was anything in it he could use as a shield. Then he wondered what good a shield could possibly be.

“It will be no matter soon,” Taethan called out. “Ready yourself!”

Heden looked up at the thing. Though still hundreds of yards away, it towered over them. It had stopped moving and reared up on his four hind legs.

It spread its two front legs outward and then convulsed in one massive shudder. It seemed to Heden as though dust fell off it in great gouts, but he quickly realized it was too far away for dust to be visible, and whatever it was, the spray of material was arcing menacingly toward them.

They were thorns. Each as big as a horse. This was how the siege engine assaulted its targets.

Heden turned and ran for cover. The nearest tree was thirty feet from him. He didn’t think he was going to make it. The ground under his feet darkened as the sky above was clouded with falling thorns.

Heden didn’t reach the cover of the trees before the thorns started to fall. They hit the ground all around him, driving deep into the earth. Wherever one hit, once embedded in the ground, it erupted in twisting, blossoming vines that prised the ground apart like a drill.

A thorn stabbed into the ground only a few feet behind Heden and the impact threw him up and flung him through the air. Somersaulting as he fell, he smashed into a tree upside down, and then flopped onto the ground. The tree, though large, suffered several thorn impacts, each one doing serious damage and then further weakening the tree with its twisting vines. This was the weapon that felled the indestructible walls of the Elementals. A tree stood no chance against it, even one of the massive trees in the Iron Forest.

Heden pushed himself up, his ears ringing, just in time to hear the tree he’d just bounced off crack and splinter under its own pressure. He got up and ran as fast as he could.

Taethan ran up to him, his shield dented. They both stood and watched as the tree started to fall. It was huge and most of it would fall into the water.

“Watch out!” Taethan called, pointing to the left.

Most of the tree line behind them was in a similar state. Hammered by massive thorns and then pulled apart by vines, twenty trees were falling, mostly but not exclusively forward.

“Black gods,” he said. The Yllindyr was going to destroy the forest in its attempt to kill Heden and Taethan. The trees were each hundreds of years old and toppling like the towers of a ruined castle. They hit the surface of the lake, each with a loud crack that forced Heden and Taethan to cover their ears.

Heden thought madly. He could summon a Dominion…but what could it do? A Dominion was only roughly as powerful as a Celestial in any case, and this thing was built by the Celestials. Had survived in the forest for thousands of years. Heden had spent so many years thinking that if worse came to worse, he could always call upon a herald of Cavall and end all dispute, that he found himself unable to recall the dozens of prayers he knew that might have been a help.

He looked at Taethan.

“Come on,” Heden said, and threw his backpack to the ground. He opened it and began pulling his carpet out. “Help me with this. I’ll fly us out of here.

Taethan saw the rolled up carpet being laboriously extruded from the pack. He pointed.

“I am not getting on that thing!” he said. The Yllindyr was getting closer.

“Yes you are,” Heden said. “Don’t worry it’s impossible to fall off it. We’ll get out of here and get the other knights.”

“It would only follow us to the priory!” Taethan called out. The engine was now walking toward them again. Each footstep an earthquake. Heden yanked the carpet the rest of the way out of the bag. It flopped down on the ground, unrolling slightly.

“Good!” Heden said. “Then it’ll be the order against that thing and maybe we’ll have a chance!”

“A thousand Elementals could not stand against it!” Taethan yelled.

This situation was all too familiar. Except usually Heden was arguing with five or six other people about the looming certain death. In a way, it was refreshing to be here with only one person to argue with.

“Well, I don’t have any better ideas!” Heden called out. Heden started unrolling the carpet. Taethan was probably right, this thing could take down a whole army of Elementals and they had nothing to….

Heden’s head shot up.

“I have a better idea!” he said, and thrust his arm back into the pack.

He ran forward, trying to put some distance between him and Taethan. Give the knight a chance to react if Heden failed.

The engine was almost upon them. Heden pulled his hand out of his pack, removed and thrust
Starkiller
into the air.

The sword burst into blinding almost-light. It hurt Heden’s eyes, the space behind his eyesockets exploded with pain. He kept his arm up and blinked furiously, trying to see how the engine was reacting.

It had stopped, and reared up in what seemed like alarm. In this position, the same from which it launched its catapult-like volley of thorns, it seemed like a god of the forest. So large, Heden couldn’t even see its massive head from down here.

But it had stopped, that’s what was important. The dwarf sword was made to kill elves and by extension anything they made, though it had a special taste for the star elves. The Yllindyr feared it. Seemed to fear what it could do. Heden didn’t know how long that could last.

He tried to remember what the sword could do. It had been years since they found it, and he’d never been the one to wield it.

Starfall
was a powerful spell, Heden didn’t know the full range of spells the dwarves put in the thing, but he knew one that was more powerful than
starfall
.

In the language of the dwaves, in Elemental, he spoke the word.

“
Cometstrike
,” he said, and a hideous screaming sound was heard above him.

The summoned comet was massive. It burned white, trailing a long tail behind it. It screamed out of the sky like a hot ingot of metal.

It smashed into the rearing elven engine of destruction, tearing through it and falling into the lake with a huge explosion, sending a gout of water a hundred feet into the air. The Yllindyr’s legs buckled. It had no bones, no skin, just a web of branches and vines and the comet had destroyed much of it.

Heden put Starkiller back in his pack and ran back to Taethan who gaped at what he’d just seen.

“Was that a Dominion?” Taethan said.

Heden was confused. He packed the sword back into the pack. Hurrying to get away just in case.

“What, that? No, Dominions are like humans with huge wings and metal skin. That was a bloody great rock called down from the sky.”

“Can you do it again?” Taethan was awed.

“Not at the moment,” Heden said, getting on the carpet. He reached out for Taethan, tried to grab the awe-struck knight and get him on the carpet.

“You were wise to bring such an artifact,” Taethan said, allowing himself to be guided by Heden.

“Well, I get lucky every once in a while,” Heden said.

“No,” Taethan said pointing up. “You don’t.”

Heden turned around.

The Yllindyr hadn’t stopped, hadn’t fallen to the ground or collapsed into the lake. It had just stumbled and lost its orientation. Though the comet had destroyed a significant part of its mass, and left a smoking empty column of burning vegetation from its back just behind its head down through its gullet, the Yllindyr seemed otherwise unfazed. It had no brain, no spine, no organs to attack. Heden wondered how much of it had to be destroyed before it stopped functioning. The Celestials designed it well.

It righted itself and turned to bellow at the two tiny humans before it.

“Shit,” Heden said.

“It was a valiant effort,” Taethan said, impressed.

“Yeah, and it’s about to be a valiant retreat, get on.” He pulled the knight onto the carpet, and spoke the command words.

The carpet rose and when Taethan’s legs buckled on the unexpected and uneven surface, Heden pressed him down into a sitting position, then sat behind him.

There were only a few yards off the ground, but climbing.

“Hold on to the sides,” Heden said. “Flying two is tricky, your weight throws me off.”

“I am sorry!” Taethan shouted, his brilliant green curls caught by the wind.

Heden willed the carpet up and away. They climbed quickly and at a steep angle.

“Don’t look over the sides!” Heden said.

Taethan looked over the sides.

“Aaahhh!” he shouted, and pulled back, clinging tighter to the edges of the tapestry.

Heden took the carpet up as fast as he could, but he’d began his ascent right under the Yllindyr. He looked behind him.

Having reared up again, the engine used one massive foreleg to swipe at or grasp the carpet. Heden couldn’t tell which, it had no proper foot, just a tangle of twisting vines and thorns that swung toward them.

“Hang on!” Heden said, and rolled the carpet in a tight but elaborate circle, flying over, then under the rapidly moving thorny limb. The carpet would always right itself so its riders could not fall off, but Heden knew that could be pushed.

At the height of the twisting circle the carpet inscribed, he looked up, which was down, and saw the Yllindyr’s massive leg below him.

It was at that moment that Taethan threw up.

Heden ignored it, and finished the carpet’s roll, then sped up and away, leaving the Yllindyr behind him.

“It’s okay,” Heden said. “We’re away. We made it.” The wind made it difficult to talk. The forest stretched out below them, and infinite field of green leaves.

“I do not know,” Taethan said, wiping vomit from his mouth with one hand, while grasping the edge of the carpet tightly with the other.