The Coming Storm (87 page)

Elon was there, his people trapped.

Turning in her saddle, she looked the other way.

Colath was on the other side, against a banner she didn’t know. It didn’t matter, as those forces turned as well to fall on those between them and his Elves, trying to reach them but not in aid. Not with swords raised against their fellows.

The Elves were trapped, helpless. They would be slaughtered, unable to flee.

A few mage-bolts flew from the rear, far too far away to have an effect.

Ailith’s breath caught at the enormity of the disaster, at the thought of the lives lost, the loss of those who mattered most to her.

Silence fell.

Turning back to the battlefield she saw one basilisk go down to mage-bolts, crushing everything in front of it on both sides. There were so many more. Others bent down, to get dinner or enthrall more? Goblins and hacked and slashed. It was pure slaughter. Screams rang from the all sides of the army as the two flanking companies hacked their way through those between them to get to the Elves.

Elon.

Colath
.

NO
! Her heart was breaking.

They were trapped.

Elon saw instantly that there was nowhere to go, their horses hampered by the living bodies of the enthralled soldiers around them. They were trapped. His people, feeling that magic, had known it for what it was and turned their eyes away. His outcry of warning to the surrounding troops hadn’t saved them, though. The enthralled men and women of the army hemmed them in on all sides.

Elon tried to find room enough to turn Faer but the other horses around them hindered him.

He saw the banner turn.

Riverford’s forces shifted. They weren’t enraptured. They’d been warned.

As one they smashed against the forces of the army in front of them, with no doubt of their intentions.

His people. Trapped by the crush of the army around them.

He shouted at some to turn their fire on Riverford. It was a slim chance but it might slow those who closed on them. There was no escape. Their only choice was an impossible one – to cut their way free by slaughtering those poor innocents around them , or die.

They couldn’t kill those people, not in honor.

He’d been trapped, deliberately, by Mornith and Geric.

They’d known he would take one side or the other.

The other.

Colath!
His true-friend.

Alarm raced through the bond.

Ailith, sensed it, too.

Looking across the field of battle, still now and mostly motionless, Elon saw the banner there turn as well as those there forced their way through their frozen companions toward Colath and the Elves there.

His vision had been made real.

Elon looked around, trying to find an honorable escape.

There was none.

Behind him was Geric and Riverford’s forces. Too many for his people. He saw it and knew it.

Ailith.
To know her father had done this.

Elon had no illusions. What was now Geric wanted him dead and it looked likely to be, unless he could find a way through or their arrows prevail.

Ailith, I am sorry.

Colath.

Those two held the back of his mind even as he tried to find a way out.

Helplessly, Daran High King watched from his place on the heights as their forward advance turned from victory to defeat in seconds. He could only watch, stunned and helpless as disaster struck. Although he ordered the reserves forward, they couldn’t penetrate the tight mass of the forward advance.

Basilisks. He knew of them only from legend. He had no experience with such and had considered some of the tales he’d heard to be an exaggeration. It was only luck that he hadn’t been looking in that direction. Elon had warned him, knowing how Daran felt about magic. He’d discounted it.

The effect was this. His forward advance was halted and his forces were being slaughtered to a man and woman.

Then he saw the banners turn, Riverford and Granite Heights, one on each flank.

Geric had specifically asked for the position.

Now Daran knew why as he watched in horror as both fell on the troops beside them, turning traitor.

He’d known Elon had misgivings about Riverford but those he’d discounted due to Elon’s relationship with Riverford’s errant daughter.

Now, watching, he realized it had been far more than that.

It was clear from where he stood what the goal of the two traitor Kings was – the Elves, trapped now by the frozen troops around them.

His best and most efficient fighters were helpless and about to be slaughtered.

Turning, he shouted furiously at Avila, who averted her eyes from the huge swaying lizards.

“Do something!”

Avila looked at him. She knew she’d made a mistake, a terrible one. Against all advice she’d put her people at the front. Elon had told her to scatter them throughout the army. At the time she’d been furious at the idea that he thought he had the right to tell her what to do with her wizards.
Her
wizards. That despite knowing as she did that Elves had long experience in the wars of men and these creatures.

Now, she would pay the price for her ignorance and spite.

If nothing else, she hated him all the more for being right. She’d wanted to win this war for Daran, put her people in the forefront and turn the tide herself. Proof that wizards deserved a place on the Council. That
she
did. Despite Elon of Aerilann.

Now, even her people were dying and she knew it.

She dared not let Daran see how badly she’d miscalculated.

“We’re doing all we can,” she said back, firing mage-bolts at the things.

She knew she was too far away to be effective. She knew it but didn’t want Daran to know it.

Daran wasn’t blind, or stupid. Those firing closer at least caused the creatures to flinch.

Ailith was desperate, frantic. She knew Elf lights and Healing from Elon and the Elves but that was no help to her. She knew earth and iron from the Dwarves. Scanning the ground she knew she could open it up but it would swallow the innocent as well as the guilty. She couldn’t do that.

No. Wait
. Otherling magic beckoned her. She went back.

There was something there, something deep in the earth, something her magic recognized. Bones, old bones. Bones so ancient they dated to the time before men had first come to these shores, to the time when the Elves and Dwarves alone had ruled here.

Of the ancient hunter of basilisks until men had hunted them to extinction.

A creature the basilisks wouldn’t like.

Tangled up in those bones was an indomitable spirit, trapped within the earth it longed to be free again, to soar up into the bright clear sky. To find release. To go home.

It would be an act of desperation and it would be unmistakable.

Wild magic
.

If she used it, they couldn’t fail to notice. There would be repercussions.

Before her there was slaughter, growing closer to her own frozen troops. She looked down at the wide-eyed face beside her, the expression in his eyes revealing his helpless terror as he stood frozen and staring.

A glance over her shoulder gave her truth.

Elon
.

She caught only a brief glimpse of his tall, dark figure, looking around desperately, trying to find a way out of the trap that closed around him. Her heart wrenched.

She looked the other way.

Colath
. His fair hair glinted in the sun as, ensnared, he, too, sought a way out.

On both sides Riverford and that other banner drew closer to the Elves.

Behind Colath, the forces of Granite Heights turned to slaughter their companions, a sea of helpless fighters. It chilled him, the callousness of that act. A helpless fury burned cold in his chest. There was no escape for him or his people. All that remained for them was to fight as best they could, outnumbered by the forces that closed on them. He ordered some of his people to turn their arrows on the soldiers of Granite Heights.

He looked across the field of battle, seeking a brief sight of those he knew and loved.

In the far distance he could just glimpse Elon, his true-friend, rendered as helpless as he. That was where he should be, guarding Elon’s back, fighting at his side.

He wasn’t. Jalila was. He sensed her strong spirit and was grateful that she fought where he wasn’t.

Between them, Ailith’s distinctive chestnut hair shimmered sparks of red and gold in the bright morning sunlight. He felt her growing despair through the bond they shared, as he felt Elon’s.

Colath straightened. All he and they could do was fight and try. That he would do.

Turning in his saddle, he drew his swords. He wouldn’t surrender his life easily.

There was one chance and only one.

Forgive me, Elon
, Ailith thought.
I have to do this. I can’t let you, Colath and your people die. I can’t
.

It wasn’t in her.

She bowed her head.
Jalila, watch his back
.

Jareth was out there somewhere. Olend and Itan. She could see Olend’s banner across the battlefield as his people trying to break through to take on the basilisks. His people knew those creatures. Even he couldn’t get past the enraptured army.

Forgive me, Elon. I couldn’t bear it if you died. If Colath died. Our friends. Or any of these others. They are all my people. But most especially, you and Colath. And you
.

The oddest silence had fallen in the midst of the battlefield.

In the distance, there was laughter.

Mornith, on the hill, was laughing. She could hear him clearly.

Unbelievably, Daran High King heard cold and bitter laughter above the sounds of the slaughter. In despair and fury he looked up at the cloaked figure on the hill, at that dark and dreadful thing that stood there. Laughing at the butchery that went on below him. At his victory. The taste in Daran’s mouth was that of bitter ashes. He clenched his fists in helpless fury and grief.

This couldn’t be his legacy. It couldn’t end this way.

That laughter infuriated her. Anger and grief lashed at her. It roared. Power leaped to answer Ailith’s raging grief.

Laugh?

Laugh at this
, Ailith thought, in furious horror and defiance. Impotent despair tore her heart to shreds. It burned like acid in her chest with the raging power of her grief. Her breath came short as it rose up in her throat to choke her.

Wild magic
. She could feel it strain at her will.

It had found a way to answer her heart’s desperate need. An ancient spirit called to her, cried out to be free, even as the magic within her wept for release.

And so she released it.

It surged through her in a great rush, poured out of her, raced out of her like rain in full spate to soak into the earth along with the blood or all those that had been spilled there. Her body sang with the power of it and she screamed as it reached for the sky…

Deep in the earth, something awakened and something was released.

It screamed its defiance, an echo of her rage, taking her heart with it.