Stone Rising (9 page)

             
“They… they can’t be thinking…” Iain began, but John was nodding solemnly, an expression a curious mixture of pride and disappointment etched on his broad face.

             
“Aye, they mean to kill the Shiriff before he comes to get us first.”             

             
A pause, then Iain spoke again.

             
“What do we do about it?”

             
“It’s a suicide mission,” John replied. “They have no hope of getting out alive; even should they succeed in slaying him, his guards will fall upon them instantly. Their heads will be mounted above Nottingham’s gates the very next day.” His mighty hands balled into fists. “We must go in, find them, bring them back.”

             
Iain cocked his head, frowning in confusion.

             
“How do you think we should go about that, then? The two of them could find their way into town easily enough without arousing suspicion, but an army of us? We’d be cut down by bowfire before we reached a hundred yards of town walls.”

             
“Then what do you suggest?”

             
Iain looked up at the larger man, obviously weighing up the possible outcomes of his next words.

             
“They made their bed. They should lie in it.”

             
A snarl twitched across John’s face as he rounded on the Forester.

             
“Just like that, eh? Who was it that spoke to me of family? You want that we should leave our kin to die for no other reason than the folly of youth?”

             
If Iain was scared of the hulk before him, he gave no sign, his back stiff and legs sure as he retorted.

             
“If we go in to rescue them, more might die. Many more, that will be needed in days ahead to protect the people that live here. We cannot risk more lives simply for the stupidity of two! Tell him, Alann.”

             
John opened his mouth to shout the Forester down, but a word cut through the tension in the air, defusing the situation as ably as a bucket of water upon a fire.

             
“Enough.” The Woodsman rose from his chair as the two turned to listen. “I have made my decision.”

Chapter Five:

Darkness was falling as they rounded the corner and came upon the village. There, on the road, a solitary figure standing, bright orange lantern held aloft in the encroaching dusk. Virginie left the pack, rushing forward to meet the stranger. Pol darted forwards, ready to protect her, but was stayed by Gwenna’s raised hand. She didn’t need her shaman senses to see the familiarity in Virginie’s movement.

             
“Felice? You got my message?”

             
The woman with the lamp nodded, the two embracing, before parting.

             
“The letter arrived a few days ago, ma cousine,” she replied. “But tell me, what is all this about? Who are these people that you wish me to hide?”

             
“Friends. Good people, but who’ve fallen into trouble.” She turned, waving back to the troupe which followed, calling them near.

             
“So, you are Felice?” Gwenna smiled as she drew near. “Many thanks to you for agreeing to put us up.”

             
A curt nod was her only response, a cold look, a mixture of suspicion and fear written across the woman’s face. How much had Virginie told her cousin, thought Gwenna? All of a sudden, suspicion was aroused briefly within her own breast; how close was Virginie to her cousin? Could Felice have betrayed them for the reward offered by l’eglise? Once upon a time, in a world far from here, Gwenna could have called upon the spirits of water to divine the truth she needed. But here, now, she had no such power to fall back on. There was no time to think things through now, not here on the road.

             
The woman turned, gesturing them to follow her into the darkening village. The shaman gave a quick look to Virginie, who nodded in encouragement. No choice but to continue as they had; trusting in the kindness of strangers and hoping against hope that they could find eventual safety. It had worked thus far.

             
She only hoped it would not fail them now.

***

The fire crackled warm and welcoming in the hearth of the inn, the smell of roasted meats and boiling vegetables filling the air with pleasing aromas, disarming with ease the suspicions which had beset her before. Looking about the low-beamed bar, Gwenna could see that the other shamans all appeared to feel more at ease too, sprawled out as they were wherever there happened to be room; the chairs, the floor, the rug before the blazing fire. They all looked tired, but pleasantly comfortable.

             
She could feel it herself, too, now that she was in the warm. Her eyes drooping, limbs feeling like they were weighted down with lead. Such strange feelings; even now, so long after arriving in this land, she still felt  keenly how cut off they were from the nourishment of the earth, the succour of the spirits. Where once a mere thought could open a connection, a conduit to a world of fresh and vital energy, now her body, and those of the shamans with her, were bound by the same laws that governed those of ordinary men.

             
Fatigue had dogged their every mile.

             
“More vin?”

             
Gwenna looked up from her contemplation, to Felice who stood with a pewter decanter of sweet smelling wine. The red-haired shaman smiled as the innkeeper filled her goblet anew, this time Virginie’s cousin returning the gesture. Here, behind locked doors and away from prying eyes, it seemed that she had relaxed somewhat, a fact for which Gwenna was grateful. Suspicion only ever begat suspicion.

             
A sip of the rich, sweet red wine. She closed her eyes in appreciation. The wine was better here even than it had been in the ever-summer glades of the Retreat.

The Retreat. She thought back with a sigh; how long it seemed since she had departed the shamans’ spiritual home for that final time, marching at the head of a ragtag army of plainsmen and betrayed-followers of the God-king Invictus. Marching towards that epic final showdown against the forces of darkness. What would have become of their home now, half a universe away? They had blown shut the portal between worlds behind them, trapping the evil forces of Those Beyond the Veil, for now, at least. Was her birth-world even now overrun by gibbering hordes of demons and their ilk? Were the plains afire, the mountains scoured of life?

              Did anyone yet live that they had left behind?

             
She shuddered for an instant, suppressing her horror at the thought of a world bereft of life, stalked by raging demons with fire for eyes and teeth of obsidian. But then she steeled herself; for was that not the very fate that they had hoped to forestall by coming here? Their previous world was lost; had been, since the very first moment their Lord had been dragged, screaming from this very world into that of her birth;  taken, a pawn, a minion in an unknowable and elaborate plan of domination by dark and ancient forces that dwelt in a realm of fire and brimstone. No, their homeworld had been doomed from the start. But here? Here they had a chance. They had time to prepare the world, the human race, for the invasion to come.

             
She thought to the country that she had seen, the people she had met and helped on their journey south through France. This world seemed ignorant of even the basics of communing with the spirits, seemingly blind to the wonders of the life that dwelt unseen around them. In fact, those in power seemed to go even beyond that, persecuting with great ire anyone that even showed any hint of believing in any powers beyond that of their nameless and faceless ‘god.’ What a strange concept, she thought. Most men in her previous world had struggled for freedom, keen to live a life of independence, free from the tyrannical grip of a distant ruler. Here, it seems, they craved it, so much so that they would invent kings where there were none, rules to abide by simply for the sake of abiding.

In all her experience, Gwenna had known no gods, no deities worthy of worship.

She had met the Avatars, sure; those vast and incomprehensible incarnations of the elements themselves, each more than just a physical being, instead, a representation of that entire element – earth, fire, air, water – as it appeared throughout the cosmos. Yet even they had demanded no worship, content in knowing themselves to be what they were; just a part of a greater whole. A large part, an integral part, but a part nonetheless.

Within, not above.

Besides, the god the masters of the French people seemed so eager to push on everyone and inflict upon themselves was ascribed human characteristics; the Avatars as she had met them were inscrutable, alien, so far beyond mankind as mankind was beyond the ants, beyond the worms that crawl through the soil.

             
No. Only one being had she met that appeared to meet that strange and idealistic fusion of earthly humanity and godly power, mortal and immortal. She thought back to when she had last seen him, that final parting look of those piercing green eyes as she’d passed through the portal.

             
Stone, once-called Invictus, the God-King. A mortal, plucked from his life and dragged screaming through the barrier between worlds. Changed, hardened. Made something
more.
Filled with dark power, then emptied, cleansed, to be reused, recharged. Repurposed.

             
What was he now, Gwenna thought? Even with the wisdom of Wrynn coursing through her veins lending her knowledge beyond her years, she couldn’t fail to be amazed by the power she’d seen displayed as he’d fought in that final, climactic battle against the demons arrayed against them. Twin glaives a-glow with power, he’d surged through the ranks of the foe like a celestial comet; where he’d struck, death had followed, his glowing skin and rippling torso proof against any and all weapons of the enemy. Where he had soared on wings of light, quailing hearts had grown strong. Where his mighty hand had touched, people had changed, grown, become better, more whole, more assured of their purpose.

             
Yet even so, even despite the miraculous power that now dwelt within him, a living, fiery conduit to the combined might of the Avatars themselves, even despite that, Gwenna still knew that Stone was no god. Nor would he even pretend to be. Once, perhaps, when she had only known him as Invictus, she would have most likely said differently. She had grown up to tales of his barbarism, of his iron rule. But despite all her harboured vehemence, the man the shamans had rescued, unconscious, on the brink of death, had not been the tyrant of legend.

             
He had been merely a man, used, abused, then discarded once his purpose had been served. A man so difficult not to like, whose green eyes and easy manner had seemed so familiar, so welcoming to the red-haired shaman that she’d found herself warming to him despite her reservations.

             
Only when her mentor and guardian, the late, great Master Wrynn had finally left this world, leaving her with all his accumulated wisdom and memories had she finally learned the truth, the secret her teacher had kept from her for all these years.

             
The bond of blood that tied the flame-haired shaman and the champion of the elements.

             
Felice sat down beside her on the woollen rug before the fire, the sudden movement startling Gwenna out of her musings, placing the decanter down between them and looking over at the shaman. The Frenchwoman’s gaze took in the curling red ringlets, so rare and unseen in these parts, the orange glare of the firelight highlighting the curiosity in her eyes as she spoke.

             
“Forgive me my rudeness of before,” she began, her southern French accent lending a rural twang to her speech, yet thanks to the lingering magic of their lord, no more difficult for Gwenna to understand than Virginie’s own lilting voice. “After my cousin’s letter, I wasn’t sure what to expect.

             
The shaman nodded, regarding the other woman. The family resemblance was plain to see; the softly-tanned skin, the almond  brown eyes and hair the colour of dark sand. Perhaps Felice was slightly older than Virginie; late-twenties, early thirties, the faint beginnings of worry lines beginning to make themselves known, as well as wisps of lighter hair amidst her locks, yet she carried the look with all the aplomb Gwenna had noticed the Frenchwomen could.

             
“Quite understandable,” Gwenna replied with a disarming smile, “have no fear.” She paused for a moment, pondering her next words carefully. “What exactly has Virginie told you, so far?”