The Crystal Mountain (26 page)

A momentary look of compassion crossed Nilsa’s face, but she smoothed her expression quickly. “It was decided that you should be separated, never to see one another again,” the angel explained. “There can be no risk of you coming together to cause further trouble for the House. I’m sorry, but that’s the way it must be.”

“I hate you all,” Aliisza whispered, choking back sobs. She crumpled to the floor. “I hope you and your stony god wither and die.”

Nilsa pursed her lips and reached for Aliisza. “Enough of this,” she muttered, grabbing hold of the alu. “We’re leaving now.”

Aliisza started to jerk free of the angel’s grip. She wanted the fight, wanted to force the cold, heartless celestial to follow through on her threat. It would prove that Aliisza was right in her assessment of how unkind and unfair Nilsa truly was.

Nilsa opened her mouth to say something, perhaps even to utter a word of power and knock Aliisza silly as she had promised, but a voice from down the hall interrupted her.

“Hold, Nilsa.” It was Tauran. He and Kael approached together, Garin right behind them. Aliisza’s heart leaped at the sight of them both. A foolish grin spread across her face.

“What are you doing here?” Nilsa asked in surprise, frowning. “Garin, our instructions were clear.”

Aliisza yanked herself free of the angel’s grip, jumped up, and ran to Tauran and Kael. She wrapped an arm around the fallen angel and the knight and hugged them both tightly. Warm feelings of hope and possibility coursed through her, where only despair and defeat had dwelt before. “I thought I’d never see you again,” she said, her face buried in their shoulders. She felt Kael chuckle softly as the two of them returned her embrace.

Behind them, she heard Garin say, “It’s changed, Nilsa. Everything’s changed.” The weary sound of his voice made Aliisza wince.

“What are you talking about?” Nilsa asked, walking up behind the alu.

“Tyr is surrendering his godhood,” Garin answered.

Aliisza pulled back with a start and looked at Tauran and Kael. “What?” she asked. “Truly?”

Kael nodded and Tauran said softly, “He has already done it.” His face held a grim expression, a visage that Aliisza had come to think of as a scar, every bit as permanent a fixture as a sword wound.

Aliisza turned to look at Nilsa. The angel had a stricken look on her face. She stared at nothing, her mouth opening and closing. Compassion welled up in the alu. She didn’t know what to do. She took the angel’s hand in her own and said, “I’m sorry.”

Nilsa stared back at her. “It’s true. I can’t feel him with me anymore. I’ve lost Tyr.” Her hand shook in Aliisza’s grasp.

“He’s sending all of us to serve Torm, and he’s marching to war under Torm’s banner,” Garin said. When Aliisza turned to gaze at him, his wide eyes, usually so keen and piercing, looked lost.

Tauran said, “We have all been asked to aid in the fight. The demons are coming.”

Aliisza gasped. “Demons,” she said. “Does that mean—?” Kaanyr. It’s just what you would do, isn’t it?

“Yes,” Kael replied. “Tauran and I agree. If Kaanyr is with them, he will try to reach the Lifespring.”

“It would be the final insult hurled at us,” Tauran said. “Invade the blessed House, find and bathe in the Lifespring. The one thing he sought in all this and was ultimately denied.”

“He shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near it,” Aliisza said.

“No, he shouldn’t,” Tauran agreed. “Even on principle alone, I would deny him that which he desires most. But beyond that, with the power of the Lifespring at his disposal, he could become a dangerous force for the abyssal lords.”

Aliisza bit her lip. The pain of his betrayal was still fresh. She wanted to hide away, wanted to avoid seeing the cambion again. But too much was a stake.

“We must stop him,” she said.

Are you sure?” Garin asked, offering a sincere yet hopeful smile. “We could really use you with us.” Nilsa, whose haunted expression bespoke her struggle to come to grips with Tyr’s abdication, added, “It’s going to get rough today.”

Eirwyn nodded and offered her own apologetic smile. “Yes,” she said. “Though I know the importance of getting every possible soldier on the battlefield, I sense that I am needed elsewhere.”

As if to reinforce the grimness of the moment, a band of high clouds drifted across the sun, bringing a hint of gloom. They stood on a small, high plaza, near the very top of the tallest buildings of the Court, where the breezes were fresher and unimpeded. The wind ruffled the angel’s hair and carried the barest hint of an odor of smoke upon it.

Most of the angels of the Court and Trueheart had already headed toward the front, preparing for the impending onslaught of demons headed toward the House. The great hall of Tyr stood nearly empty below the trio.

“What have we come to?” Garin said softly. “The end of an age? Is this how even the gods pass?”

“Don’t say that,” Nilsa admonished, her sorrowful look deepening. “Tyr has chosen to walk among his people as a warrior once more. When this unpleasant business is finished, and he has cleared his head of whatever troubles him, all will be set right.”

“I hope, for both your sakes, that it is so,” Eirwyn said. She reached out and clasped both Garin and Nilsa on the shoulder. “I understand the pain you are feeling. I pray that your sadness, unlike mine when Helm fell, is brief and supplanted by joy again very soon.” She paused and cast her gaze down at the stones between their feet. The next part was harder to say. “I want both of you to know that I bear neither of you any I’ll will. You have been loyal servants of Tyr, and now Torm, and none can fault you for fulfilling your duties.”

“Thank you,” Garin said, and he sounded genuinely relieved. “I’m sorry it came-to all this.”

Nilsa didn’t say anything, but she came toward Eirwyn and hugged her tightly.

When Eirwyn pulled back at last, she said, “We all still fight the fight of law and goodness. I am with you in spirit. But I must do this. I sense its importance.”

Nilsa looked doubtful, but Garin gave one knowing nod in return. “Very well, then,” he said, “You do what you must. We will miss you.”

“May the blessings of Ty—of Torm be with you,” Eirwyn said. “Drive them from our holy lands.”

“We will,” Garin said. He and Nilsa turned to go. They leaped into the air together and swooped out over the railing, leaving Eirwyn standing upon the balcony of the Court by

herself. Her eyes followed them as they soared down and away from her, until they were nothing more than tiny specks upon the horizon.

Eirwyn fought a brief pang of guilt for not going with them to Deepbark Hollow to face the invading demons. The angels and archons there were in for a terrible fight. They would need every last able body they could muster.

You have other matters to attend to, she reminded herself. They will prevail without you.

Eirwyn fanned her wings and leaped into the sky, soaring aloft into the gray afternoon. Despite its emptiness, she felt a pall on the House, a grim foreboding of what was to come. She wondered whether Tyr still dwelt within, if the melancholy she felt emanated from the former god, radiating his sorrow.

He still commands an impressive presence, Eirwyn realized. He knows much blood will be spilled before the day is through. He laments how many celestial creatures will die today.

Many more demons will perish, she thought. The House of the Triad will stand against all evil.

With that resolute thought firmly in her mind, Eirwyn winged her way in the opposite direction of Garin and Nilsa, heading toward another part of the plane, on the far side of the great mountain of Celestia. The fresh wind blew at her back, and she quickly left the gleaming white of the Court behind her.

She couldn’t say with certainty what led her in the direction she had chosen, only a divine sense, a calling that her presence was needed. That was the way of things with her divinations. She could not always explain why she felt what she did, only that the urges were invariably accurate. She felt a familiar comfort in it all.

As she flew beneath the darkening clouds, she tried to gauge where she ought to seek. She followed her instincts, altering direction more than once as she felt herself getting off course. Before long, she realized where she was headed.

The Lifespring.

That was odd. She would not expect anyone to be there, ] not on that day. Everyone would be at the front, fighting ‘; to hold back the tide of demons who were trying to break through the weak point of the plane. Then a glimmer of an idea occurred to her.

I wonder… Tauran, I feel your hand in this once more.

Suspicious that she was on a collision course with old friends and enemies alike, she surged ahead with renewed determination.

When Eirwyn reached the great floating mountain hovering among the clouds, the beach appeared deserted. The golden waters churned within the great basin, tossed about by the brisk winds that blew across them. She was tempted for a moment to take a quick dip, to allow the healing touch of the magical forces there to soothe her weary body and mind, but she resisted. A sense of urgency buzzed in the back of her mind. Whatever had drawn her here, it demanded her immediate attention.

She descended to a point along the narrow beach near where the flowing waters spilled over the side and disappeared into endless white below. She settled onto the sand there and looked around, trying to find some sign of what she was meant to do. Nothing caught her attention.

Eirwyn frowned. If Tauran has need of me here…

She could not shake the feeling that she was not alone. “Eirwyn!” a voice called from high above…. he would be in his favorite spot, Eirwyn finished, grinning.

The angel turned and craned her neck, seeking Tauran. She spotted him easily, standing near the apex of the highest, sharpest pinnacle of rock, where the waters flowed out of the mountain to splash into the pool below.

Tauran waved to her and motioned to her to join him. She could see that others were there as well.

Eirwyn took flight again and headed to the top. When she settled upon the stone outcropping of rock, she found Kael, Aliisza, and the drow wizard with Tauran.

Tauran stood before her, and she was struck by how weary he appeared. His hair, always so golden in the sun, had become a muted brassy shade and didn’t retain its luster of before. His face was gaunt. His eyes had sunken a bit into his skull.

She embraced Tauran and held him tightly for a long moment. She could feel the tension in him, but she refused to let go until some of it drained away, and then she was practically holding him upright.

“The road has been long, my friend,” she whispered to him. “But I still feel the strength of righteousness within you. And I am here to share your burden, as I know you would share mine.”

Tauran clenched her more tightly, then released her and stepped back. A small glimmer of gratitude shone in his eyes. “Thank you,” he said, his voice thick.

Eirwyn turned and greeted each of the others with smiles and hugs. “I should have known I would find you all here,” she said at last. “Banded together to the end, following your own

course, listening to your own wise counsel before accepting the edicts of any other.”

“We believe Kaanyr will come here,” Aliisza said. “We think he still intends to bathe in these waters.”

“We all came to the same conclusion when we heard that war was brewing,” Kael said.

“It’s what he would do,” Tauran said, “just to spite all of us and fulfill what he probably insists is his rightful destiny or some such nonsense. We intend to stop him.”

Eirwyn looked over at the drow. “You agree with them?” she asked.

Pharaun shrugged. “I haven’t the barest glimmer of an opinion about the cambion’s motivations,” he said with a chuckle. “But seeing how my prospects are decidedly nonexistent, 1 gave in to whims of fancy and decided to join the fray.”

“Sounds good to me,” Eirwyn said. “How can I help?”

“You don’t need to aid us,” Tauran said. “You’ve already given up too much for me as it is. I cannot ask for more from you.”

Eirwyn rolled her eyes and grinned. “Oh, don’t be so melodramatic, Tauran. You should know me better than that by now. You think I just happened to stumble upon you four here while out randomly flying around? I knew I was needed, and I came. Besides, my only other option was killing demons, so it sounds like a wash, to me.”

Tauran laughed. It was the first time in a long time that Eirwyn remembered him doing so. “Fair enough, my friend,” he said.

“Now, what’s the plan?” Eirwyn asked.

“No plan,” Kael said. “We simply wait and watch.”

“We aren’t sure how Kaanyr intends to get here,” Aliisza said. “He might come alone, hoping to slip past the House’s army, or he might attempt to bull his way here with a horde of his own. I’m betting on the latter. He was never one for subtlety.”

“Whatever he does,” Tauran said, “from up here, we’ll know when he arrives.”

Eirwyn hefted her mace. “When he does, let’s make sure he regrets it.”

A long, ragged line of celestials ran through the woods, angels and archons forming a defense against invasion. They waited and watched the barrier between their own world and the void beyond. The forested land felt calm and pure, towering trees interspersed with green thicket upon the leaf-covered ground, right up to the point where magic altered the fabric of reality. There, the land stopped, and the shapeless clouds of elsewhere crackled with blue lightning.

Every celestial stared at that seething maelstrom, waiting.

Garin and Nilsa stood on the edge of a large clearing, a wide glade that spread out for perhaps three hundred paces and abutted the preternatural storm. The pair of devas commanded a company of archons, the hound warriors milling on either side of them. Their responsibility was the clearing. Nothing was to be allowed past them.

“Garin, I don’t think I can do this,” Nilsa said, standing next to him.

The deva pulled his gaze away from the roiling, purplish

wall of insane magic and looked at her. “What is it?” he asked.

Nilsa appeared unsettled. Her wings fanned and fluttered, and she seemed to look nowhere and everywhere at once. “I’m afraid to…” she let the words trail off and gestured helplessly. “I can’t.”