Resurgent Shadows (Successive Harmony Book 1) (20 page)

“This weapon has more power than anything I have ever encountered,” Eric said, studying Valundnir once again. “A warrior with it, a leader, could bring hope to those who have none. And for that, I would risk the thorns.”

“You talk often of giving hope to others, yet you have none yourself.”

“What do you mean?”

“You think that your race is doomed to destruction, and yet you put on this facade for others to see. Why give them hope when you have none?” Torsten’s gaze was piercing and held him in place.

“If I didn’t know better, Torsten, I would think that you could read minds.”

Torsten chuckled and shook his head. “That is not one of the abilities that Atelho has given me, but I don’t have to read it in your mind. I can see it in your eyes. I can sense it when you pray and when you speak. Your heart isn’t in it.”

“It gives people hope, and even a false hope allows people to have something to live for. It is better that they die fighting than that they die hiding in a corner, lost and alone except for the darkness around them. And you’re wrong. I do have hope and a faith in my creator. Faith comes before the miracles, Torsten, not after.”

“And when will your miracles come?” Torsten asked. He didn’t wait for a response, but got up and walked away.

Eric stared after him for a long, long time, until well after the other dvergers had returned from scouting the surrounding countryside. Valundnir spun in his hands, creating a swirling circle of silver and black against the night’s black backdrop. When Eric finally laid down to sleep, the hammer remained within his grasp, clutched in one hand as he slept.

*              *              *              *

Horns blazed in the darkness, tearing Eric from sleep. He came awake all at once, but before he could even move, massive hands as cold and hard as granite seized him and lifted him bodily from the ground. Valundnir toppled out of his hands and clattered against the wall. He struggled and twisted, trying to break his assailant’s hold, but the grip was like iron. With a grunt from the unseen attacker, the arms flexed, and Eric was slammed back against the wall. Pain shot through him as his head struck the brick and the breath was blasted from his lungs. Dust and mortar flew into the air, surrounding them in a cloud of ash and debris. A couple of bricks fell from the wall and clattered against the ground.

He reached out for Valundnir with his mind, pulling at the hands that held him while struggling to find his breath. The hammer didn’t appear.

His vision swam, swirling with whorls of black and white as his oxygen-deprived mind fought to focus. He forced his eyes shut and called out to Valundnir again. Instead of Valundnir appearing in his hands, Eric felt a wave of energy and strength shoot through him, and from within that flood of energy, a torrent of anger and rage clawed its way to the surface.

His eyes snapped open.

His hands shot up to the creature’s arms and latched onto its wrists. His thumbnails dug into the underside of each wrist, digging into flesh, searching for tendons and nerves. The hands that gripped him slackened, and Eric tore himself free of the grip. He dropped to the ground and rolled, leaping to his feet behind the shadowy mass that was his assailant. He spun faster than he thought was possible, and sent a leg flying out to sweep the attacker off his feet. Pain shot through him as his leg connected with his attacker’s. It remained immobile, as hard and unyielding as if it had been made of stone. With an angry curse, the rage and anger within him surged in accompaniment to a renewed wave of energy and Eric scrambled to regain his lost momentum. He wasn’t quick enough.

A fist slammed into his side, landing with such force that at least one rib broke with an audible crack and Eric was sent flying. He landed hard, and the air was knocked out of him again, though he hardly registered it through the anger and energy that pulsed through his veins.

With a shout, he leapt to his feet as his shadowy attacker charged. The battle had raged close enough to the remains of the fire that, as the creature charged, Eric was finally able to make out the gray porcine features of the trulgo bearing down on him. The coals gave off a faint reddish light, which made the bare gray flesh of the trulgo’s chest appear as if it were smoldering with fiery embers. Eric spread his arms and feet wide, and caught the charge.

The trulgo crashed into him, massive weight granting it a momentum that sent them both hurtling backwards. Eric wrapped one of his arms up under the trulgo arm and the other up over its neck, arching his back into the roll and pulling the trulgo down with him. He bent as he fell and kicked upwards, driving his knee up into the trulgo’s groin. The creature grunted in pain, but Eric continued to push his legs upwards, arching his back. Together they rolled completely over in the dirt and ash, coming to rest in a tangle of arms, legs, and gnashing teeth with Eric on the top of the pile.

He extricated himself from the mess quickly and balled up a fist. He struck downward at the trulgo’s face with all the force he could muster. Bone cracked. His other fist descended, squishing into an eye. His other fist, shining red and orange in the light of the coals, swung downward again. He rained blows on the trulgo’s head until the beast finally lurched and sent Eric toppling into the dirt.

Eric leapt up and turned, his feet placed wide to meet the charge once again. Blood dripped into his eye from a cut on his brow. The pain in his leg and from each of his cuts, bruises, and contusions was gone. Only the contest mattered.

The trulgo lumbered to its feet, peering beadily around through one eye. The other was a mass of purple smeared with orange and black. Its lips looked like they had been through a meat grinder. Despite this, the creature smiled when it caught sight of Eric’s ready stance. It smiled and blood poured from its lips and down its chin.

“You fight good, human,” it said. Its voice was deep, and rumbled like the sound of a distant avalanche.

Eric roared defiantly back at it. “Prepare to die!”

The trulgo took a step forward, his mouth twisting into a grimace of annoyance. Suddenly, the trulgo lurched forward. Its mouth opened wide, revealing a cavernous maw filled with broken, jagged teeth. It took another step, then toppled to the ground.

Eric threw his fists into the air and roared. Valundnir appeared in his hands, though the right fist couldn’t close over the haft. Energy, elation and power radiated through him. The joy of victory.

Something moved behind the trulgo’s body, and it was only then that Eric noticed Pedryn standing a dozen paces behind the creature, empty crossbow leveled in his direction. Eric blinked in confusion, some of the energy and emotion dissipating, allowing his mind to think more clearly. Where was the quarrel? He looked down at the trulgo and noticed the end of an arrow sticking out of its back. It had hit the trulgo just under the left shoulder blade, driving through flesh and piercing the heart. Only the fletching remained visible.

Eric felt a momentary flash of renewed anger, not at the trulgo, but at Pedryn for stealing his victory.

Eric blinked and shook his head. Why should he be angry? The trulgo was dead. He was alive. That is all that mattered.

The energy left him in a rush. It left him cold, as if he’d passed under a glacial waterfall while naked. Suddenly he was aware of all his bodily pains and he cried out in surprise as much as from the pain.

“Guerreiro?” a voice called.

Pedryn was suddenly beside him, his arm wrapped around Eric’s chest for support. Eric looked at him blearily and blinked a couple times to try and focus. He felt weak. He hurt, and he wasn’t entirely sure what had just happened. Valundnir dropped from his limp fingers.

“Let’s get you to Torsten,” Pedryn said.

Eric felt himself being led. Pride kicked in, and he struggled to stand on his own. His legs wouldn’t support his weight.

“Did we get them all?” he asked, resigning himself to being half-led, half-carried.

“There were only a half a dozen, just a scouting party. They’re dead, though we took several wounds. Torsten is healing them all now. I’ve already sent a message to the main army.”

“Where’d they come from? This one looked different than the ones I saw earlier. It didn’t have armor and was smaller.”

“Aye, Guerreiro—and lucky for you. These were from the Brown Dragonhosts. The Red Dragonhosts have withdrawn from the area though we don’t rightly know why.”

“We’re still close to Natalie and the others. Will they be safe?”

“They’ll be safe, Guerreiro.”

Eric nodded, unable to articulate anything further. There was something significant in the departure of the Red Dragonhosts, he was sure, but his fatigued mind couldn’t concentrate on the subject for long enough to pin it down.

He sighed and, gritting his teeth, turned to meet Pedryn’s gaze. “Thank you,” he said simply.

Pedryn grunted, but the corners of his mouth twitched in a smile of satisfaction. Light flared up as one of the dvergers threw more wood on the fire and fanned the coals. Someone produced a lantern, a strange ovular glass filled with a thick fluid that glowed with a strong green light. It cast the dverger squad into sharp relief as Eric was lead towards the far side of the camp where Torsten was tending to the wounded.

Waelin hurried past. He shot them a curious glance but, for once, he didn’t have anything disparaging to say.

Torsten looked over at them as they approached. The dverger he had been attending rose and snapped a fist to his breast in salute before hurrying off into the gloom. The fire roared higher as more wood was tossed onto it.

“Ah, Guerreiro,” Torsten said with a smile, “that was quite a fight. I saw part of it from here—well, most of us did in fact. There weren’t very many of them, so some of us got to watch part of the battle.”

“Why didn’t Valundnir come when I called?” Eric asked as Pedryn helped him to sit. Eric’s strength was returning, but his mind and body was left with a sense of fatigue that seeped into his very bones.

Torsten grinned, his eyes alight with suppressed mirth, but upon seeing the look on Eric’s face, he subsided and started inspecting his wounds.

“Elithalma can be a bit . . . peevish at times. They are temperamental creations, Valundnir more so than most. Maybe it wanted to see if you could do this on your own.”

“It’s not a living thing, Torsten.”

“It
is
, in a way,” Torsten said calmly. He pulled a bandage from a nearby pack and wrapped it around the cut on Eric’s head to stem the bleeding. “It has a sentience at least. I wouldn’t go so far as to say it is alive, exactly.”

“But it still helped me,” Eric said. “I felt the same strength and energy as when I hold it, just without it being in my hands.”

Torsten shrugged. “It’s a new Elithalma. They are all different, each with its own power and abilities. Sometimes abilities will remain dormant through many different wielders, only to appear when a specific Guerreiro wields it. Who can say?”

“I felt so strong, so angry, so alive!”

“Aye,” Pedryn said. “I didn’t know humans were that strong. You tossed that trulgo clean over your head.”

“We’re not,” Eric said. A small part of him wondered at what Valundnir was doing to him, at the rage, anger, and bloodlust that had come over him, but he dismissed it after a time. It would help protect his family, and that was what mattered.

An awkward silence followed, only broken by a sudden whoosh of sparks and ash as something large was tossed into the fire. A terrible, acrid smell filled the air, so foul that Eric’s eyes began to water, and he broke into a fit of coughs.

Torsten grimaced as he fished his amulet out from inside the folds of his robes.

“I’ll never get used to the smell of burning flesh,” he said. “Not if I live to be three thousand years old.”

Eric didn’t have to look at the fire to know what was burning then.

“Hold still now,” Torsten said. “I need to heal these ribs before they do any more damage to the surrounding muscles.”

Torsten reached out with the amulet and placed it up against Eric’s bare chest along his ribcage. Eric couldn’t remember his shirt being removed. The metal talisman was cool against his flesh. Torsten closed his eyes and began muttering under his breath. The language was one that Eric had never heard before, but it was obvious the cleric was praying. The amulet grew suddenly warm and a jolt of energy shot through him. His muscles seized up, his fists and jaw clenching and his legs spasming as if he had been hit with an electric shock. Just as quickly, it was gone. The glow from the amulet faded and Torsten stood up.

“Well, the ribs are healed. You’ll be weak for a little while, but you’ll get over it. Pedryn, get him something to eat.”

Eric blinked a few times and then squinted at the cleric. He meant to ask Torsten if one of the dvergers would go back and check on Natalie and the others, but Torsten’s form twisted in and out of focus. With a sigh, Eric slid sideways and toppled into the dirt.

“So what do we do now?” Caleb asked.

“Now we wait, Caleb,” Sigvid replied. “We can’t travel until after nightfall anyway and it’ll give us time to plan our next move as the day passes.” The dverger took a fleeting glance toward the back of the cave, but then looked away again almost instantly.

Caleb picked up the knives and leather and walked back to the mouth of the cave where he’d left his bow. He took a seat next to the fallen stalactite and rested his back up against its cool surface, facing the mouth of the cave.

“Why don’t you get some rest, Sigvid,” he said. “I’ll take first watch. There will be plenty of time to make plans later and we’ll need some sleep. I doubt we’ll be getting much later.”

Sigvid muttered his appreciation.

Caleb took a quick glance out of the cave mouth to make sure that nothing was amiss before starting to work on the bracer, measuring the leather against the girth of his arm and punching some holes along the seams so he could lash it together. It was not the prettiest thing, but it was functional. He slipped it onto his left forearm over the sleeve of his shirt and pocketed the scraps of leather. He might find a use for them later.

He shifted to ease his aching back. He was hidden in the shadows and would not be seen from the outside, but it gave Caleb an unobstructed view all the way down to the lake. In the morning sunlight, the air shimmered with a musty haze over the ground, casting a gray pallor over the dark green water. Caleb couldn’t remember when he had stopped expecting to look up and see a blue sky. It had been near the beginning, after Charlotte had fallen and before Thomas had left. The ash that blanketed the ground in several inches of black powder had been around a lot longer though. That had come in the very beginning, accompanying the earthquakes and the volcanoes and the hints of anarchy. There had been true chaos then, though all of it became gray beneath the ash. Coughing had become something as common as breathing. Some of the old and very young had died from the respiratory complications, though that was unsurprising considering what had happened to the medical facilities soon after the cataclysms. Looting was the least of it.

It had been Caleb’s idea to find refuge in the Charlotte city-fortress. Rachel had wanted to try and make it out to their family in Utah, but Caleb had been too stubborn, too proud to listen. There was strength in numbers and he was sure that they’d be safe within the city-fortress. They wouldn’t have to hide or defend what meager amounts of food they managed to scrounge together. He hadn’t believed the rumors of the city-fortresses falling to angry hordes of golgent and winged death, not then. His mistake had cost Rachel and Benson their lives.

Scrubbing his nose with the back of his hand, he sniffed and blinked rapidly to clear his vision. For a moment, it had blurred.

He reached down for the bow at his feet and felt a surge of calm as his fingers wrapped around it. He breathed easier and was able to focus.

Rachel would not have blamed him, he knew, but he still blamed himself. He missed her soothing voice and the feel of her body against him at night. Caleb allowed his thoughts to drift and he found himself reliving the dream from which he had been aroused that morning. He’d had it so often, he could recall it perfectly even when awake. The words reverberated in his very soul, “Find me!” But the dream this morning had been different. There had been more: “It is the Dragonlords who are the heart of Chaos. Listen to your dreams and they will guide you.”

It was crazy to think that his dreams meant anything at all beside the random extrapolation of his subconscious mind, but they had felt so real. Even now, awake and recalling the dream, he could almost feel his wife’s presence as her voice echoed in his mind.

If the Dragonlords were truly at the heart of it all, there was little that he could do about it. What was one man against a dragon?

“Daydreaming on watch, boy?” Sigvid barked from right behind him.

Caleb jumped and looked around guiltily, pulling his thoughts back to the moment at hand. Sigvid glowered down at him, though the dverger’s short stature only barely put his head above Caleb’s seated eye level.

“What if a trulgo had come up while you were lost inside your head, boy?” Sigvid barked, stomping his foot angrily.

“I would have smelled him coming,” Caleb said in a small voice, bowing his head and hiding a smile.

Sigvid shook a fist at him, though his eyes twinkled faintly. “Not over your own pungent odor,” the dverger replied. “I’ve been thinking. I’m going into the city-fortress tonight. If there are any dvergers still alive, that’s where they would have been taken. Red dragons take great delight in tormenting dvergers for sport whenever they get one in their clutches. They’re not as evil as the browns, but many times more cruel. I’ll not ask you to come with me.”

“There are still dragons in there?”

“Aye. At latest report there were three smaller reds and a larger one with a human Dragonlord. He seems only of minor importance though or he would have flown off with Mortan-zai a few days back. That is why I cannot ask you to come along. Few can face a lone dragon and keep their sanity, even fewer a Dragonlord and his mount.”

“I’m coming with you,” Caleb said with such firmness that Sigvid arched an eyebrow at him quizzically. Caleb flushed and Sigvid let it pass. Caleb had no desire to debate his dreams with the dverger’s ancient and inbred sense of pragmatism.

“Very well. We’ll wait for the cover of darkness and then we’ll get in and take a look around.”

“And if the dragons find us?”

“We die—but we’ll try and take them with us before we go. Now get some rest.”

*              *              *              *

Battle raged in the skies. Gouts of solid flames tore through the air, leaving the acrid smell of death behind. Dragons of all colors darted through the flames, flashes of lightning and clouds of noxious gases spewing from the gaping maws of the bronze and black dragons as they battled against one another.

A large red dragon, whose wingspan was so wide it seemed to blacken out the sky, cut a swath through the flight of dragons, spinning in a rolling dive that sent the flames fanning outward, pushing all the other dragons back. It lashed out with one of its massive clawed feet and grasped onto the throat of a majestic gold male, its claws sinking into the scaly hide and drawing lines of deep purple blood.

The gold roared in agony and rage, and the rider on its back lashed out with a long, brightly gleaming sword at the red’s sinewy foot.

There was an answering flash of steel and the red’s rider blocked the descending blade.

The dragons twisted in midair, clawing and biting at one another in their struggle to become the lone survivor. The embattled pair fell through the air as they fought, locked together in enmity’s suffocating embrace. Flames and mysterious flashes of light and energy illuminated their descent, punctuated by roars of anger and pain from the dragons and the staccato ringing of steel on steel from the equally hostile battle between the two riders. The ground flew upward to meet them and, unable to win and unwilling to let go, both slammed into the earth and broke upon it as the battle continued above them.

“Get up, boy.”

A small shove pulled Caleb from his dreams and back into the waking world. Sigvid stood above him, his face unreadable in the dark. “Night’s here already and you’re driving me batty with all that trembling and muttering in your sleep.”

Caleb took a breath to steady his racing heart as Sigvid moved off. The dream had seemed so real like it had been a memory that he himself had been a part of. Caleb shuddered. He had never seen a real dragon and hoped that if he ever did they would be nothing like the dragons he had seen in his dream. The red dragon had been massive and ferocious, killing and attacking with reckless abandon, the uncontested master of the skies.

“Are you coming, boy?” Sigvid growled at him from the mouth of the cave.

Guiltily Caleb got to his feet, hastily packed up his bedroll, and donned his quiver and bow. He pushed thoughts of the dream aside. It was, after all, just a dream. The reality to which Caleb had awoken was just as dangerous and just as fantastic. What was more, Caleb could actually die in the real world, as had the gold and red dragons from his dreams.

He stepped out into the late evening light and immediately gagged from the smell and dust that assaulted his nose. He looked around and was appalled at the death and decay he saw around him. He put a hand up over his mouth and nose, both in an effort to block out the smell and as an unconscious reaction to the nightmare to which he had awoken.

A misty haze of ash turned the sky a sickly shade of reddish brown that cast the pallid light of putrefaction over everything it touched. Darkness was closing in, but it traipsed as slowly as death across the sky. A gray blanket of cinders and detritus littered the ground in drifts. A few trees remained standing along the edge of a distant hill, their blackened trunks devoid of limb and life. There was nothing green, no life, anywhere that Caleb could see. The air hung heavy with the smell of sulfur and charcoal, evidence of the flames that had burned rampant though here at some point in the last few months.

Caleb felt his bile begin to rise and he gagged, but was able to keep himself from vomiting. He had seen it all before, but he hadn’t truly been outside since Rachel’s death. His memories of the last few years were a blur, as hazy and fog filled as the sky around him. He shuddered and forced himself to calm down. Caleb closed his eyes and took a deep breath despite the smell and turned to follow Sigvid, who had stopped to wait for him.

“There’s not much hope left in the world, is there, Sigvid?” Caleb asked when he caught up to the dverger.

Sigvid smiled ruefully, though not unkindly. “You’re not wrong, Caleb, though hope is never truly burned away. Even in the most impenetrable darkness, a single flame can banish the night.” It had the sound of a proverb. “It’s hard to find at times, but you’ll start to see it in the little things around you.”

Caleb was not sure if he believed the dverger or not.

“How are we going to get into the city-fortress to look around?” Caleb asked.

“There’s a way into the tunnels beneath the city to the north of here.”

“Tunnels? What tunnels?”

“I’m a dverger. I can sense the caverns and passages under the ruin even from here.” Sigvid said it in such a straightforward tone that it was clear that he thought Caleb should have known this.

Caleb rolled his eyes. He was somewhat familiar with the myth and legend surrounding dwarves, but dvergers were a different thing. He was not about to assume anything. He had lived with Sigvid for a while and was just barely getting to know the smith himself, let alone the dverger culture.

“So are there any other hidden dverger skills that I should know about?” Caleb asked while adjusting the arrow knocked to his bow.

Sigvid gave a small laugh, though it was short. They were walking through a flat area and had a good view of everything around them, so while they were relatively sure that they were alone, they knew sounds carried in the darkness.

“Hidden skills? We dvergers have an affinity with the stone and the metal we work. We listen to it and it speaks to us in turn.”

“Yes, but can you see in the dark? Are you resistant to magic, heat, and cold?”

“Aye, we can see well in the darkness, better than you humans at least, but not as well as the aylfins. Rock, by nature, is resistant to everything that tries to move it. Eventually it succumbs to the wind, water, and heat that slowly break it apart, but it takes centuries.”

“So that’s the dverger way of saying yes to being resistant to magic, heat, and cold?”

“When did you get so nosey?” Sigvid asked huffily, pulling out one of his axes.

Caleb shrugged. “Just curious.”

“Dvergers are resistant to magic and nearly immune to cold and heat. We have a strong resistance to most poisons too. Now hush, these trees are making me edgy.”

Caleb obliged willingly, feeling a similar sensation. They had entered what had obviously once been a small wooded area, but was now no more than a forest of blackened husks that stood out eerily against the moon’s gentle glow.

Something popped in the night, stealing the quiet. Caleb had his bow up and the arrow half drawn before he realized that Sigvid had simply stepped on a large chuck of burnt wood that had crumbled beneath his boot. Sigvid swore softly and gestured for Caleb to lower his bow.

He eased the tension on the bowstring and released the breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding.

“Let’s get out of here,” Sigvid whispered hoarsely.

Caleb didn’t need to be told twice. He hurried after the dverger, careful to stay close so as not to lose him in the darkness. As they ran, the dead trees loomed up out of the darkness like silent ghoulish sentinels that marked their path on either side.

Caleb hoped that Sigvid really did know where the hidden entrance was. He had become lost almost as soon as they had entered the blackened forest. With a slight grin, Caleb thought how nice it would be to have some barbecued ribs. There was plenty of charcoal around for fuel.

Where had that come from? Caleb silently berated himself for the errant thought. It was neither the time nor the place for such distractions.