Stones Unbound (The Magestone Chronicles Book 1) (20 page)

The alarm bells had been ringing now for at least fifteen
minutes.  Captain Keyth had risen from bed and unhurriedly gotten dressed,
making sure to put on his armor out of habit, even if an attack was unlikely up
here. 

He was now standing on the balcony outside his study about
half-way up the tallest tower watching as the sky skiff rose up above the
battlements on the west side of the sky citadel.  He could see his forces
battling on the ramparts, as well as firing arrows at the rapidly climbing
ship.

The sky skiff had its sails now set for full running, and
the breeze was strong, coming out of the northwest – ideal if you were trying
to get to Goralon, or more specifically Karvesh.  He watched as the ship turned
his way and began to cross above the courtyard mere spans from where he was
standing.  Hoyle was standing at the wheel steering the vessel and looked over
to meet Captain Keyth’s eyes.  He nodded once and then turned back to his task.
 Keyth had to step back hastily as the side jib sail came, very nearly, to
sweeping him from his balcony.

His forces knew what they were about, trained day and night,
always vigilant at the edge of the Empire.  Therefore, when he looked down to
the courtyard, he could see the drake riders preparing three of the large
reptiles.  Archers were standing by to mount.

Along the walls, one of the catapults fired at the flyer
once it cleared the danger of friendly fire, its flaming pitch traversing an
arc through the dark night, leaving trails on his vision.  The second catapult
fired when the first missile was half way through its arc.  The sky skiff made
a sudden move to one side and up slightly, causing the first missile to miss by
only a few paces, and then the skiff cleared the far wall and dropped from
sight.

Down below whistles blew as the first drake made the
lumbering run and then lurched into the sky to chase after the fleeing ship. 
The other two were in the air shortly behind the first, shadows lost into the
darkness.

Inside, a knock sounded on his study door and the door
opened without waiting for an invitation.  Only one person would do that. 
“What do you have for me, Thandria?” he asked as she stepped up beside him at
the stone balustrade.

“As soon as the alarm bells went off, I went to the barracks
they were given.  Their guards were incapacitated, though not permanently
harmed.  I found this.”  She handed him a sealed parchment with his name on the
outside.  How they had managed to come by sealing wax, he did not know… He
shook his head, they were resourceful - he had to admit.

He moved back into his study where several candles
flickered, offering enough light to read by.  Thandria closed the glass door
behind her, shutting out the strong breeze still trying to cling to winter. 
Keyth broke the seal on the parchment and read the scroll – twice.

“Wait ten more minutes, and then order the bell ringers to
recall the drake riders.”

Thandria nodded, never questioning his orders, saluted and
then left him alone.  He went to his side table and poured himself a Valkiir
brandy and sipped it while slowly chuckling to himself.  It might just work.

Sometimes, when I look back at the events leading up to the
war, I wonder if by some other
Choice
– could I have changed the course
of events?  Of course that train of thought leads towards regret, and I make it
a point to try and live without regrets as often as possible.  Again, that can
also lead to a lack of conscience, which I also try and avoid.  I find a
little, very quiet, voice inside my head telling me when something might be a
bad idea very reassuring at times.  But I digress.

In those last few days before the invasion, when we were
wandering the woods, trying to find our way to Karvesh, worry became my
constant companion.  Sometimes that was more consistent than those persons
accompanying me, but at times much less helpful. 
Choosing
to put that
aside, and do my best was all the tools I had available to me.

Of course, during our capture and subsequent escape, those
tools again became useless.  At least I wasn’t in a small stone box.  I would
have died before that happened again!

Journal of Hoyle Dardanel

The 5
^th
of Julra,

In the year 89 IR (Imperial Rule)

Celia finished her Shielding spell, and headed to the hatch
while trading jibes with Hoyle, and climbed down the ladder-like stairs to find
herself standing in a small cabin.  A narrow red wood door faced her; the left
side had a built-in bench with a small fold-down table hanging against the
wall.  The right side of the small space had some small shelves with rails in
front to hold objects in place as the craft shifted.  Another small rack held
two bows and two quivers of arrows.  Behind her on each side of the ladder,
below her waist height, were two long bunks that filled the space to the rear
of the skiff.

Not knowing where to go, but spotting no obvious hiding
spots in the small cabin, she moved to the door, ducking her head as she moved
forward, the headroom diminishing.  Opening the door, she held her breath. 
Sitting in a small depression in a metal lined shelf attached to the mast was a
quafa'shilaar the size of her fist.  The only other stone of this size she had
ever seen, other than those massive ones powering the sky citadel she had just
discovered moments ago, was housed in the Staff of Everilon wielded by the head
of her order, Endergot.

This quafa'shilaar was a deep violet, with flecks of amber
floating within, swirling through the infinite depths that were quafa'shilaar -
magestones by the more common name.  She stood hunched over it, as the cabin
was quite short.  A small chair was nailed to the floor immediately in front of
the tray holding the stone.  A belt was attached to the chair that appeared to
clasp over someone’s lap once seated.  Beside the chair was a flared metal tube
that ran along the boards overhead, back towards the rear of the ship.  She
closed the door, stepped around the chair and sat.  She grabbed both sides of
the belt and clasped it around her. 
What now?

She could hear noise up on deck, and could hear things
shifting as the others tried to get things ready for when she got this thing
moving.  She tentatively reached out and touched the stone in place.  She
recoiled as she sensed anger and felt heat through her hand.  She looked down
to see unblemished skin where she had touched it.

She touched the stone again, this time ready for the
response, and gritted her teeth as she held firm against the raw emotion
pushing back.  She had no exact frame of reference, but she could feel emotions
mirroring pain, fear, anger and… loneliness?  This never happened with the
small quafa'shilaar that the Dar'Shilaar earned when their training was
complete.  She let the emotions wash through her and past her, and accepted them
into herself.

Are you afraid?  I am too.  I want to leave, and would be
willing to take you with me, but I don’t know how to make this work.

Suddenly she felt hope stir within the depths of the quafa'shilaar
and the sky skiff began to vibrate, then lurch upwards slightly, then finally
lift skyward slowly.  Suddenly, it was as if she was the ship, her vision
expanded to see all the components of her new ‘body’; her graceful sails, and
side ‘wings’; her deck; her passengers; and beyond to the walls of the citadel,
and the figures fighting atop the wall.

She watched as arrows from above stuck her Shielding spell,
throwing glowing motes in all directions.  She watched as Hoyle directed Robart
to push out her ‘wings’ and Valena to drop her lower fin.  She heard Hoyle call
Salrissa’s name as the craft rose towards the battlements as if she were
standing next to him.

This new awareness was staggering – overwhelming in its
vastness, overloading her senses.  She felt like she was falling and there was
no bottom.  She projected her thoughts at the stone: 
Please stop, it’s too
much, you’re hurting me…
almost instantly her senses came back into focus,
still from the viewpoint of the skiff, but filtered.  She thought she sensed
surprise from the stone.

She was now the ship.  She was rising past the battlements,
and watched as Salrissa’s shadowy form flitted between soldiers along the wall
top like she was dancing partner to partner; leave each with a mark; a wounded
hand, a broken bowstring, a sliced belt, but leaving nothing of herself behind
but a memory.  She watched as Salrissa stepped onto one soldier’s back as he
was knocked off balance, then off another’s shoulder to the top of the stone
battlements.  She ran towards the ship and dove, arm outstretched for the rail. 
Celia could almost feel her fingers brushed the rail, but they could find no
purchase.  Celia’s breath caught as Salrissa fell.

She fell without a sound, down towards the nest that had
held the ship captive at rest, the web of slings and nets.  Celia watched as
Salrissa tucked herself into a ball and rotated her body to fall feet first
blazingly fast for the mass of ropes.  Celia sucked in another breath – she
would only have one shot at this! 
If she missed…
  It was almost fifty
spans to the ground.  She watched helplessly as Salrissa flipped herself
backwards at the last moment. She threw her arms above her head and caught a
rope in the crook of her elbows, and twisted her body through a gap in the maze
of ropes, and swung back up to rest on top of the contraption, breathing
heavy.  She lay there swaying in the rocking netting as, unknown to her, Celia
looked down from above.

Celia spoke, knowing Hoyle would hear it through the metal
tube in front of her, “Salrissa’s fine, she landed in the netting.”  She could
see Hoyle visibly relax having obviously heard her.

She watched as Hoyle turned the ship, aiming it over the sky
citadel, between the observation tower they were on earlier that evening and
the central spire that controlled the sky citadel.  She watched Captain Keyth’s
face as they passed the balcony he was standing on watching them flee, the side
jib sail just about sweeping him from his post.  She watched as two of the
catapult teams on the two nearest towers loaded their projectiles and lit them.

“Incoming!” she shouted as the first released its flaming
orb.  “Hang on!” she ordered as she asked the quafa'shilaar to avoid the
potential threat.  The ship lurched to one side and up slightly at her request,
tossing its occupants about, but avoiding the threat.

Her new awareness, even filtered as it was, was still
staggering.  She could see the drake riders and archers making ready to fly in
the courtyard below; the archers rushing out of the towers to swarm the
ramparts that were in their path; she watched captain Keyth in return watch
their flight.  She took it all in through the power of this quafa'shilaar.  The
potential was overwhelming.

Finally the skiff cleared the eastern wall of the sky
citadel, archers loosing arrows towards the small target in the dark sky. 
Suddenly she could see a swift shadow begin moving through the archers,
disabling and wounding – buying them time to get away.  The shadowy form then
vanished from the wall amidst the confusion, stepping from the shadows onto the
deck of their ship.

Salrissa strode over to Hoyle, who gave her a fierce hug. 
He then turned back to the helm of the ship and aimed them towards Karvesh. 
With Celia’s new awareness she could see the lights of the Goralon capital over
thirty leagues away.  More importantly, see could see two other things that
were a more immediate concern; the mounted drakes that were rising over the
citadel wall behind them, and the pitch being lit for the catapults of the
Goralonian fort less than a league down the valley.  They may not know what
exactly was going on, but she suspected that if bells were ringing in the sky
citadel, they were following orders to be prepared.

The drakes were on them in less than a minute, swooping out
of the black sky, nothing more than silhouettes against the partly cloudy night
sky.  Celia was able to get a warning to Hoyle through the metal speaking tube
in time for everyone to take cover as arrows were loosed from the archers
mounted behind the drake riders.  They hit the Shielding spell that Celia had
cast earlier, creating waves of golden light, like ripples on the pond over the
skiff.  However, she knew that the spell would dissipate very soon.

“There are bows and arrows in the cabin,” she relayed to
Hoyle at the helm, remembering that none of them really had any type of
distance weapon. 

She could hear him reply in a hollow voice, like it was
coming from multiple directions at once.  “We can’t afford to kill any of
them.”

Robart had obviously overheard her comment to Hoyle as he
climbed down the ladder into the cabin, grabbed a bow from the rack and strung
it.  He grabbed a quiver of arrows and climbed back on deck.  Meanwhile, Valena
had entered the protection of the cabin and sat on the bench, her hands white
knuckled gripping the folds of her robe.

Robart set an arrow into his bow and fired at the large
moving shapes terrorizing the small sky skiff.  Hoyle was yelling at him to
stop, and Salrissa had stepped in front of Robart.

“You think a little arrow is going to kill one of those
enormous drakes?” he yelled at them flinging his arm at the sky.  Salrissa
seemed to consider his point, as did Hoyle.  Salrissa stepped aside and Robart
fired another arrow into the night sky and was rewarded with a fierce howling cry
that could only have come from a drake.

Salrissa had grabbed the other bow and quiver and was
working at getting it strung when the deck heaved as one of the drakes latched
onto the starboard rail, crushing it to the deck, the side jib sail’s spar
snapped, the sail disappearing into the night.  Claws dug into the deck boards
as the drake gathered purchase, tipping the sky skiff precariously to one side.

Celia watched as all three of those on deck were thrown off
their feet to the deck and began to slip towards the starboard side of the
skiff.  Salrissa managed to brace her feet on the port side of the cabin, her
back against the tipping deck; Robart grabbed the open hatch, stopping himself,
but dropping his bow in the process, which clattered down the deck and over the
side.  Hoyle, managed to hang onto the helm, but only to keep himself from
falling off the skiff completely.  Inside the cabin, Valena had been throw
face-first across the cabin, and smacked her head against one of the shelves. 
She was lying quite still, resting in the groove where the wall met the floor. 

Salrissa, still somewhat upright, raised her bow in order to
fire at the drake, but the drake quickly snapped its jaws at Salrissa, who
barely managed to avoid it.  She did manage to smack the drake on the side of
the head with the bow, forcing it to recoil.  Celia wasn’t sure if it had hurt
it, or just made it mad.

The drake rider was hunched over the beast’s neck, making
herself as small a target as possible while the archer mounted behind her tried
to get a clear shot at Salrissa.  With Salrissa engaged in trying not to get
caught in the beast’s maw, the archer finally gave up and tried finding another
target.  He turned and fired, missing Robart’s dangling legs by a small margin.

More arrows rained down from the other two mounted archers
as they whipped past on their drakes, finally breaking through the last of her
Shielding spell.  One pierced the deck near Salrissa’s head, the other lodged
into the wood of the helm.

Finally Celia had had enough, hanging precariously to one
side, a drake talon piercing the deck close enough for her to physically touch,
her breath coming in rasping breaths, the belt holding in her now canted chair
cutting off her ability to get a full breath.  She lunged the ship upward
violently as the drake’s mouth descended for Salrissa’s legs.  Instead of her
leg, the roof of the cabin drove into the underside of the drake’s mouth and
neck, causing the creature to bellow a massive wail of pain and it to let go of
the skiff, dropping away into the dark.

Robart had pulled himself partially into the cabin by then
and was thrown upwards into the other side of the hatch by the sudden movement,
cracking a couple of his ribs.  Salrissa was tossed high into the air, but
managed to grab one of the lines for the main sail and land gracefully onto the
now righted deck.  Valena was tossed about the cabin, still unmoving, while
Hoyle had swung with the wheel, slamming his legs hard against the deck as the
ship righted itself as the dead weight fell away.

Salrissa fired a few more arrows into the darkness, wails
from the drakes indicating some hits.  Robart fell more than crawled onto the
floor of the cabin beside Valena, clutching his ribs and groaning.  Hoyle was
still steering the ship, but crouched down by the helm now that Celia’s spell
had worn off.

Suddenly Celia could hear the alarm bells from the sky
citadel, now hundreds of spans behind change.  Apparently that was some sort of
signal for the drake riders, as she saw the drakes bank and turn back.  It seemed
that Hoyle understood what it meant as well, since he relaxed and stood
upright, even though he couldn’t see the shapes in the sky clearly.

“Finally read the letter, I see,” Hoyle said, mostly to
himself.  Celia heard him however, with her enhanced senses.  Then she heard
him grunt and stagger forward against the helm, an arrow protruding from his
back.  He fell sideways to the deck causing the helm to spin hard to port,
forcing the skiff into a steep bank.  Salrissa had no problem racing to Hoyle’s
side across the slanted deck.  She turned him to look at her as blood pooled on
the deck below him.

Celia saw him try to say something, but only blood burst
forth from his lips.  Salrissa yelled for Valena as the healer and Robart were
tossed about the small cabin.

Celia could only watch helplessly as events unfolded, for
should she release her grasp on the magestone, the ship would surely plummet to
the ground.