The Book of Deacon: Book 03 - The Battle of Verril (46 page)

“Myn, I really think you should let them move
Lain inside,” Myranda said.

Myn looked to Myranda, slowly and
deliberately lowering one of her paws gently over Lain, digging the
tips of her claws into the icy ground in front of him. With that
one simple motion it was made quite clear that she had spent far
too much time away from him and seen far too much happen to him to
allow Lain to be separated from her so soon.

“I'll stay out here with them, Myranda. You
know as well as I do she'll keep us good and warm. Besides, after
ending up in a cage again, then baking in that awful mountain, I
think I'd like to spend a bit more time in the fresh air,” Ivy
said.

“Yes, Myranda. I think you deserve a night of
comfort. I'll stay out here with the rest,” Deacon said.

Myranda relented, slipping inside. Deacon
took a seat beside the tent's entrance. Almost immediately Caya
motioned for him to stand and pulled him aside. Tus joined
them.

“I've listened to the stories you've told,
and I've watched the way you act. This goes deeper than just
lending a hand for you, doesn't it,” Caya whispered.

“What could go deeper than . . . “ Deacon
began, confused.

“No, no, no . . . You're going to make me be
blunt about it, are you? Fine, then. You love the girl, don't you?”
Caya interjected with a sigh.

“I do. With all of my heart, and more every
moment. How did you know?” he asked.

“It isn't subtle. Ahem . . . “ Caya
whispered. After a conspiratorial glance, she added. “Have you ever
slept in a tent that big, Deacon? It can get awfully cold without
two people in there.”

Tus gave him a slap on the back that knocked
the air from his lungs.

“Keep your woman warm,” he stated.

“And for heaven's sake man, have a drink. You
look pale as a corpse and tighter than a bow string,” Caya said,
pressing into his hands yet another bottle of the seemingly
inexhaustible supply of powerful wine.

He put the bottle to his lips. Immediately
she tipped it up so that nearly half of its contents went down his
throat or all over his face. After catching his breath, he stepped
into the tent.

“Honestly! And to think I wondered why there
weren't more wizards,” Caya snickered to Tus, before raising her
voice. “You there, er . . . Ivy is it? Do you suppose you've got
another song in you? I'd say the occasion demands it.”

In fact Ivy had already nestled herself
against Myn, eager to get some real sleep, but almost reflexively
she put the violin to her chin. The hilly clearing began to lilt
with a soft, deep, soulful song. A song that crept into the
background, weaving with the thoughts of those that heard it. It
became a part of the surroundings, as in place and proper as the
rising sun. Most of the camp drifted quickly into a well deserved
slumber to it. To some, it served another purpose, but equally
well.

#

Deep in the heart of the capital Bagu sat,
his eyes focused intently on the man before him. It was Greydon
Celeste, Myranda's father. He'd been bound and set aside when the
bait for their latest trap was put in place. Now the senior general
watched the barely conscious form with seething attention. A
shudder went through the frail body, its eyes opening wide, and for
a moment he fought his bonds. When a sharpness and anger replaced
the fear in his eyes, Bagu broke the silence.

“Tell me you did not fail AGAIN!” he
bellowed.

“
I
failed? What happened to the
portal? What happened to the rest of the troops?” Epidime
countered.

“It shouldn't have
come
to that,
Epidime. They were forced into your hands and you let them slip
through! They should have defeated themselves!” Bagu raged. “You
had every advantage!”

“Every advantage!? It was five against one!
You pit me alone against four full strength Chosen
and
charge me with keeping a fifth in check and call it an advantage!”
Epidime replied. “And then you somehow manage to turn
our
ambush into
theirs
! In the veritable eternity that I've been
aiding you in these endeavors I have
never
heard of a portal
being stolen! NEVER! When they reach the capital . . . “

“They will
not
reach the capital,”
Bagu interrupted. “Because you and that other idiot are going to
take every soldier, every creature, human, D'karon, or otherwise,
and you are going to find them! You are going to
end
them
before they can get here! The moment is hours away! They will
not be allowed to reach this place before then!”

“You've lost what little there is left of
your mind, Bagu! If we leave the capital and take the best men with
us, then what will be left to resist them if they reach the capital
before we find them!?” Epidime reasoned, his voice dropping to a
steady, smooth tone. “Yes, there has been a failure. Mine or yours,
it is unacceptable, but we must not let it coax us into a mistake
we cannot recover from. We bolster our defenses here. We stop them
where our defense is strongest.”

Bagu tensely wrung his fingers and considered
the words.

“Yes. We harden our defenses here. The
strongest will remain within our walls. Gather some of the dregs,
the weakest of the dragoyles and the like, and send them out. At
best we defeat them, at worst we soften them and learn their
position,” he said, fury dripping from the words.

The bonds securing Epidime dropped away of
their own accord. He stood and exited Bagu's sanctum with measured
slowness, a grin coming to his face as he felt the general's anger
smolder behind him. Bagu was always much more entertaining when he
was angry. No one he'd worked with had ever reached the level of
fury Bagu seemed to constantly hover around. As a connoisseur of
the mind, it was something he enjoyed witnessing. He chuckled
lightly, savoring the surge in anger it brought, before
disappearing to issue the orders he'd been given.

#

The sun had not yet set when the small
encampment of heroes showed its first signs of motion. The ragtag
members of the Undermine were awakening expecting the customary
consequences of too little sleep and too much drink. One by one
they realized first that their heads were not throbbing nearly as
much as they ought to be, and second that the artifacts of the
impossible events of the previous day were still present. The
sudden realization that Lain, Myn, and Ivy were not, in fact, just
a dream prompted enough startled cries to rouse the rest of the
camp to wakefulness. The last to emerge were Myranda and Deacon,
each looking a bit more disheveled and a great deal more
invigorated than the handful of hours of sleep would warrant. As
the wizards blinked at the light and wiped sleep from their eyes,
Myn leapt to her feet and padded over to them. After sniffing
Deacon up and down and giving him a brief, accusatory look, she
gave Myranda an imploring glance and led her quickly to Lain. As
Myranda knelt over the still slumbering assassin, Myn curled her
tail behind Myranda to give Deacon a sharp lash on the arm.

“Ouch!” Deacon exclaimed. “Now that you've
grown I'd appreciate it if you were a bit gentler.”

“Why is he still asleep?” Ether demanded, a
quite out of place look of concern on her face.

“We placed him in a
very
deep healing
sleep. It isn't the sort of thing you wake yourself up from,”
Deacon explained.

“That has never stopped him before,” said
Myranda.

Lain appeared to have recovered from the
torture at the hands of Epidime. His physical wounds were healed,
save for a burnt and swollen patch of skin around his mark and the
lingering effects of starvation. His mind and soul were another
matter. Epidime had left them in tatters, savaged and weakened.
Myranda set herself to the task of coaxing it to the surface. As
she did, the members of the Undermine attempted to gather around,
but Myn quickly made it clear that doing so would not be
tolerated.

Deacon admired the work Myranda was doing.
White magic, where it was concerned with the mind, was a very
tricky area. Every mind was different, necessitating a level of
improvisation that was difficult to teach. Myranda, it seemed, had
a natural knack for such things. Watching her carefully untie the
knots left by the D'karon's actions was like watching a sculptor at
work. He would have been hard pressed in a day to achieve what she
had done in just these few minutes. It was best she be left to the
task. He stepped between Myn and Ether. The dragon's anxiety was
apparent, and though Ether had managed to regain her composure she
too was clearly upset. Deacon placed a hand on Ether's
shoulder.

“Remove your hand from me or I will remove it
from you,” she stated in an even voice.

Deacon hurriedly did so. He turned to Myn and
gave her a reassuring pat. She turned to him briefly, coiling her
tail for another lash. Deacon cringed, but Myn relaxed her tail and
settled to the ground, resting her head on the ground beside
him.

“Lain will be alright, Myn. Myranda will have
him on his feet in no time,” he said, scratching the creature.

Ivy wandered over and climbed on Myn's back,
absentmindedly scratching the dragon as well. She leaned close to
Deacon, an uneasy look on her face.

“Look at how the others are looking at us,”
she said.

The Undermine did indeed appear to be
surveying the heroes with a combination of fascination, disbelief,
and distrust. Only Caya and Tus behaved otherwise, with the former
seeming to be feeling little more than impatience as she awaited
the completion of Myranda's treatments and the latter chiefly
directing a blank faced stare at Myn.

“No one is talking to me any more. They were
talking to me last night,” Ivy whispered.

“Last night they were drunk. First on
victory, then on wine. It has a way of silencing some of the more
insistent voices in the mind. I dare say those voices are speaking
now,” Deacon said.

Ivy gave him a puzzled look.

Deacon sighed.

“The average person can only tolerate things
that are different in small doses. You and the other Chosen are
something of an overdose,” Deacon clarified.

“Oh,” Ivy said. “I was afraid of that. Is
everyone like that?”

“Mostly,” Deacon replied apologetically.

“That's going to have to change,” Ivy
decided. “because I don't see us becoming any less different, and
we're about to save the world. It'd be pretty silly if folks had a
hard time accepting the people that saved the world.”

“Agreed,” Deacon said.

Suddenly Lain's eyes opened and his hand shot
to his chest. Myn leapt to her feet so quickly Ivy had to grab on
to avoid being thrown. His eyes had a desperate, crazed look about
them. They swept over the faces of the Chosen around him. Myn nosed
the jealously protected share of the previous night's hunt to him.
With a disquietingly feral snarl, he tore into the long overdue
meal, scarcely taking time to breathe. As the burning in his
stomach subsided, a measure of his sanity returned. A hastily
provided canteen was emptied into his mouth. Only when its last
drops were swallowed did he finally seem to calm, surveying his
surroundings as if for the first time. As he did, Myn crept forward
and lay before him, placing her head on his lap.

“How?” he asked, as his stroking brought
about a purr almost as formidable as her growl. It was the first
he’d truly seen of the dragon since he and the others had believed
her killed.

“She was touched by the divine. They brought
her back to us, and made her what she is now. She's Chosen, Lain,”
Myranda said.

“Another soul on the pyre,” Lain said
solemnly.

He climbed to his feet, Myn reluctantly
pulling aside. The eyes of the Undermine fell upon him, and the air
was alive with tension. Lain was rigid and silent, as though the
gaze of each and every soldier was boring into him. The soldiers
felt a cocktail of feelings. Some admiration, most disgust, but all
felt a measure of comfort. This creature they knew was deceitful
and murderous. In short, he was precisely as they knew a malthrope
should be. Amid things like an obedient dragon and a lighthearted,
musical malthrope, finding a being that did not challenge their
preconceptions was akin to meeting an old friend. Caya approached
him, standing for a time with their eyes locked, measuring one
another. Caya broke the silence.

“I can't say that I ever thought the
Undermine would be working with you. We can't afford your fee,” she
jabbed.

There was a general stir of chuckles from her
men. Lain remained silent.

“I want to make this clear, Shadow. We are
not like you. You would
never
have been allowed to join us
if not for Myranda. We are freedom fighters. We are rebels. We are
not murderers,” Caya added, again to the raving of her troops.

“Caya, stop it. We have to work together in
this,” Myranda said. For a moment she dwelled on the fact that,
somehow, she'd managed to forget Lain's past. She was not sure
whether she should feel pride or shame for having done so.

“Indeed. We've saved your life, Shadow. When
this is all over, and we've gone our separate ways, I want you to
remember that, if ever one of our names comes up from one of your
employers,” Caya warned, before turning to the men and women who
followed her. “Come on, Undermine. The day has come. I want this
entire campsite on your backs, now!”

To the great relief of some, each soldier set
to work. Myranda began to help them, but Caya pulled her hand from
the task.

“These men and women are real soldiers,
Myranda. They have a routine. You couldn't offer a hand without
slowing them down,” she said.

And so the Chosen found themselves left
alone, their privacy strengthened when Myn planted herself
resolutely between them and the Undermine. The dragon focused a
dagger sharp gaze on Caya, radiating displeasure at the tone she'd
adopted. Ivy took the opportunity to prance up to Lain and give him
a hug.