The Legend of Asahiel: Book 03 - The Divine Talisman (33 page)

With a final hacking, slashing, driving frenzy, the dragon unseated the hynara from its rooted pedestal. The great tree leaned forward, its unfathomable weight drawn down over the empty wedge carved from its base. The beast might have crushed itself, but grappled and twisted. Laressa felt the trunk splinter and turn, and shut her eyes. Amid a rending, splitting, crunching chorus, the mighty council tree, as old perhaps as the dragon itself, rejoined the earth with a jarring crash, taking Laressa with it.

She held initially, but the first bounce broke her grip and sent her sailing with arms and legs afire. Branches clubbed at her like an army of wooden staves, while twigs and needles scraped and poked like the claws of an angry mob. When finally she landed, the breath went out of her, and for a moment she thought she would never draw breath again.

But her lungs responded. Dust and slivers forced her to cough. The ground still quaked and rumbled, and the hynara’s final, anguished moan still echoed in her ears. Every other sound had grown muted, as if heard with her head underwater. She smelled blood and uprooted earth, mold and pitch and sweat.
Her eyes opened, revealing a blasted mesh of limbs and needles all but eclipsing a star-filled sky.

She felt then the sudden twists and violent yanks passing like death spasms through the remains of the fallen tree. The world spun, but she managed to sit upright. A thousand pains lanced through her, beckoning her toward darkness. Beyond the tree’s ruin, she glimpsed a towering black hulk and remembered the dragon. The spasms were its continuing struggle to remove its half-buried skull from the hynara’s death grip.

A massive foot pinned the bouncing deadfall in place. A moment later, the dragon’s horns finally wrenched free. It roared, though not as loudly as before.

She felt and heard goblin claws scrabbling amid the wreckage. She fought to roll over and onto her knees, but her legs refused to draw up beneath her. She began to crawl, not certain where she was crawling to, understanding only that she was not safe where she lay. Her elbow ached, and her arms and fingers had been scraped raw. She wondered when all of that had happened. A small stream dripped steadily from her mouth. When she paused to touch it, she felt her teeth through a hole in her lip. She did not remember it being there before.

Bodies dangled amid the branches like linen hung to dry. She crawled past their sightless, gaping forms, wondering why they did not move. The dragon was still there, huffing and crunching. And the goblins…The Veil. She was headed toward the Veil. Her kinsmen, too. Why did they wait? They still had a long way to go.

She followed the twisted length of a tree limb that lay flat upon the ground, seeking its tapered end. She continued past, brushing aside curtains of sticky needles. A light flared ahead of her, crimson in its glow.
That must be the way
, she thought, and pulled herself toward it.

The light arced and whirled, a mesmerizing display. A flurry of vague forms danced around it before falling aside. Then it slowed, burning as a single shaft. It drew nearer.

A massive tremor rocked the ground as an obsidian boulder fell suddenly beside her. She looked. Not a boulder, but a mountain.
The dragon.
Its carrion breath washed over her.

She lowered her gaze, back toward the light. It moved toward the dragon, and the beast shied away with a muffled hiss of hate and frustration. She watched the creature stalk off in another direction, mowing down a field of grass before plowing headlong into a dark wall of trees.

She turned back toward the light. It was directly above her now, emanating from the blade of a—

As the Sword’s aura washed over her, so too did a flood of memory and realization. The Sword of Asahiel had returned, its wielder come to save them. Annleia must have succeeded. She must have found Torin and convinced him to give the Vandari a second chance. Together, they might rid the world of this pestilence after all.

His face looked familiar enough, but when he smiled, Laressa felt her heart grow cold. All at once, her body became rigid and unresponsive. This was not Torin, she realized, only another nightmare.

Knowing that, she glared at him defiantly.
End it
, she thought.
End it and let me wake.

His lips moved, but her fading sense of sound had vanished altogether. Odd; that had never happened before. Though his words escaped her, his cruel smile remained, as he raised the Sword, blade pointed downward, in both hands. She eyed him grimly, but without fear. She was tired of being cowed by phantoms.

Then the blade struck, through her back and through her heart and through the earth upon which she lay, and a wall of fire consumed her vision.

T
HE
S
WORD’S POWER SWEPT THROUGH
him, and Itz lar Thrakkon had never felt so alive.

Burn
,
elf. Burn within
,
and be born again.

Laressa Solymir, wife to Eolin and thus queen of the Finlorian Empire, stared up at him with a trickle of blood running down her chin. Her eyes had lit up the moment the blade pierced her flesh, calm daze giving way to horrid comprehension. Her life was ended, her true suffering not yet begun.

As it would be for all of them, Thrakkon sneered. He waited for that invisible curtain to cloud his victim’s gaze before yanking the Sword free. Its flames retreated, and her broken body lay still. The sweetest kill that he had tasted.

He left her for the Illysp, and went searching for another. The valley yet teemed with them, and his hunger was far from sated. He sensed them fleeing, sensed them huddling, sensed them stiffening as they were hewn down. A night he had dreamed of for centuries. Indeed, he had been yearning for so long, it scarcely seemed real.

His goblins were anywhere and everywhere, though he had kept his giants close at hand. He signaled to them now and set off on Killangrathor’s trail, to hunt those the dragon had flushed but failed to kill. Dregs now, compared to their queen, but he would have them all.

For hours, the Illychar hunted and slew and hunted some more. Thrakkon did not bother to count the number that fell before him—those who would soon learn the horror of being entrapped, enslaved forever, as their ancestors had left his kind so long ago. Not half the number he desired, whatever it might be.

Even so, the taste had grown bland long before the dawn came, bringing with it red-tinged clouds and a cleansing rain. While the initial onslaught had been thick and intense, the Illysp lord had become bored with the tedious process of rooting out those individuals who had not perished or fled early on. As satisfying a victory as it had been, he hungered already for a greater challenge.

He dwelled upon that for some time, seated upon a broken stump as he watched Killangrathor rooting at the cave mouth behind the Veil. Mud and
boulders fell from the heights, cast aside by the dragon’s claws. Every now and then, Killangrathor would worm his head past the cascading waters and into the opening, to roar in hatred or fill the darkened depths with gouts of flame. Better to burn them all, the dragon seemed to think, than allow even one to escape.

Thrakkon would not disagree, but it seemed a poor use of time. There would be no shortage of strays and vagabonds to be hunted down when the larger battles were won and done. Only hounds and beggars chased table scraps when there were full courses yet to be had.

Their objective here had been accomplished. But where could the next feast be found? They had come a long way—too far to be fully satisfied by such a swift and easy massacre. Now that the Finlorians were dead or scattered, what target would be most likely to bring this land to its knees?

He wished he knew more about this Yawacor. He wished Torin were not still able to keep so much of it from him. Surely, by now, his host vessel’s former spirit understood the futility of resistance. Why not surrender its remaining treasures and learn to revel in its new power?

The sort of gnawing question Thrakkon had no patience for. A fish did not question why it swam, nor a hawk why it soared. Each made the best of its appetites and abilities as nature intended, and let the rest be determined by its strength.

At last Killangrathor flew down to join him, a dark hulk glistening with water and mud and blood. Their own battle had not yet ended, but Thrakkon had too much to gain yet from his use of the beast to consider bringing that conflict to a head. The dragon seemed to share his dilemma as it settled upon a nearby ridge, glaring openly, leaving Thrakkon but one guess as to what the creature would do were it not so wary of how the Sword itself, so devastating and mercurial, might respond.

When the goblins, too, began to regroup, Thrakkon knew his time for contemplation was ended. He had to keep moving, had to keep them from growing restive. To the south, he decided. That was where Torin had fought his great battle at the edge of the ocean. A bold move, given that city’s proximity to those cold gray seas. But he would show no fear. Not now. Not ever.

He only hoped that he would find there a more formidable foe.

He took to his feet. As he did so, his chest clenched sharply, suddenly. The goblins stirred. Killangrathor raised his ugly head. The cramp held as if it might not let go, before passing as all the others. Thrakkon grinned and held the Sword aloft as his minions peered at him expectantly.

“To Neak-Thur,” he said, relishing the taste of the name as the agony of drawing it from Torin’s memory subsided. “Before our next feast grows cold.”

H
E CONTINUED TO RIDE IN
his dreams.

The enemy surged after him, a shrieking, thunderous press that closed from three sides. The beat of his horse’s hooves hammered in his head. He felt the presence of the city wall looming somewhere in the dark, but could not see it. Lar held the line ahead of him, at the tip of the shield wall, but never seemed to draw any closer.

It occurred to him that he might be dead. Though he could not recall his own name, he seemed to remember that the enemy wave had already overwhelmed him once. But if that were so, why did he still ride?

Perhaps that was the true nature of the Abyss, to toil endlessly in the final moments of one’s life, repeating forever that last, failed conflict. Gods knew, with the number he had killed—either at the tip of a blade or with the commands of his voice—his soul deserved no greater comfort than those of an eternal hell.

Yet he could still feel the reins in his hand, still taste the dirt in his mouth. Stabs and cuts stung and throbbed. The darkness might mean he was dreaming, but he dared not slow to find out. The reavers were nearly on top of him. He could smell their rancid flesh. Their hands were upon him, cold and clammy, drawing blood with every swipe. He drew breath to scream—

His eyes flew open as he lurched upright, fist clenched. He heard a startled cry. A crash and a clatter of wood upon stone. A splash of warm liquid—his enemy’s blood, perhaps, or his own. He gritted his teeth.

His gaze fell not upon an assailant, but upon an attendant, her doe’s eyes wide with shock. She held no weapon, but a wet cloth. An upturned bowl lay upon the floor, in a puddle of warm water. More of the same soaked his sheets. He was not armored. He was not even clothed.

He sensed movement from the other direction. A second attendant was dashing from the room even as a robed chamberlain and guardsman entered. They caught the girl, who only turned and gasped.

“My lord,” the chamberlain wheezed. “Pray calm, my lord, you are safe.”

Corathel
, he realized.
My name is Corathel.
He turned back to the attendant in his clutches.

“They come to bathe you, my lord. She means you no harm.”

The general released his grip on her pale, skinny arm. “Pray pardon, milord,” the girl murmured, scurrying after her companion.

He said nothing, but looked back around to the chamberlain and guardsman, who stared at him through the open curtains of his four-poster bed. The
lighting was mercifully dim, though the chamber stank of herbs and potions, salves and bloody bandages, thick incense and trapped candle smoke.

“Is my lord well?” the chamberlain asked.

Corathel blinked. “Water,” he croaked.

The chamberlain dismissed the nurses with a reassuring whisper, then turned himself to pour a cup from a flagon beside the general’s bed. While Corathel drank, the chamberlain asked the guardsman to close the chamber door and resume his post outside.

“Leave it open,” Corathel said. He motioned with the empty cup for a refill, and the chamberlain obliged him.

“Not too much, my lord. You’ve had naught but spoonfuls for these eight days past.”

“Small wonder I thirst,” he said, before draining the cup. When he finished, he looked around. “Is this Leaven?”

“The governor’s own house, my lord. You were injured. We feared you might not wake.”

Corathel ignored the words, his attention drawn by a shuttered window. Through its wood slats, he could still hear the furor that had plagued his dreams—but distant, like the churning rush of the Merrethain River beyond the walls of his boyhood home.

“I’ll summon a page,” the chamberlain offered, “and send for the healers.”

“I stink enough of healing already,” Corathel complained. “What I need is some fresh air.”

“My lord, I beg you, do not exert yourself so soon. I shall open a window, if you like.”

Despite the man’s protests, Corathel moved to rise. Shifting his legs, however, filled his head with clouds that nearly stole his vision. The horrors of the Abyss rose up to meet him…

“So be it,” he agreed, settling back upon his mound of pillows. “But send also for my officers. I want reports.”

“As you command, my lord. Rest, now.”

The chamberlain rushed to comply with his demands. Corathel felt slightly better with a breeze blowing through the open window, though the light stung his eyes. It was morning yet—the Lark’s Hour, perhaps, or the Snipe’s. Of which day, he could not guess.

He thought again to haul himself from his feather-stuffed coffin, and so slid his legs—carefully this time—toward the edge. Again the dizziness swelled within, and with it a multitude of throbbing pains. Corathel struck the mattress in frustration, then threw back the sheets to have a look.

Both legs had suffered damage, but the right one…Corathel winced at the horrid sight. Amid the many cuts and scrapes were the scars of leeching, the bruises left behind by tourniquets, and an array of foul-smelling poultices. The color was wrong, and when he peeled back the largest of the poultices, laid upon his thigh, he found a foul ichor oozing from the gash beneath.

“What must we do to make the gods take you?” asked a familiar voice.

“Salt your soul and baste your flesh in honey?”

Corathel dropped the poultice and looked to the doorway as Jasyn entered the room. “That was fast.”

The lieutenant general strode to his bedside, leather boots heavy upon the floor, the pieces of his partial plate clinking. “As it happens, I was on my way to check on you before heading to the wall.”

“My lady mother would be pleased, I’m sure.” He offered his hand, and Jasyn clasped it in greeting.

“Looks better than it did,” the Second General observed, nodding at his exposed leg. “Might be you’ll get to keep it after all.”

Corathel grimaced at the prospect, though he’d recognized at once the grim possibility. “I think I’d rather part with my head.”

“So you’ve told me in the past, and so I relayed to them butchers in healers’ robes. I made it clear, any man who intended to take
your
leg, first had to give me
his
.”

The chief general smiled. “In that case, I thank you.”

“Don’t thank me yet,” Jasyn said, dragging up a wooden chair. He sat himself in reverse position, his arms folded atop the chair’s low back. “The rest of my news might not be as well to your liking.”

“I thought myself dead already. Unless you tell me I’m a reaver, things are not nearly as bad as I’d feared.”

“Understood. Even so, your thanks go to Lar. He’s the one who scattered that pile of reavers and made sure that you were hauled inside before commanding the wedge to fall in as instructed. Had it been my choice, I might have left you there, just to make sure you learned your lesson on why we generals do not serve as rear guards.”

“Says the man who I’ll wager was the last to enter the city and raise the bridge.”

“Wager won, but then, if I didn’t commit the occasional lapse in judgment, the king would have made me chief general long ago.”

“Ceilhigh save us. What were our losses?”

“Of your cavalry regiment, nearly half. Of the main body, one in ten. Closer to two in ten, if you count the wounded. Not so terrible, considering.”

Corathel would not deny that assessment. The loss of eight hundred men was nothing to scoff at. But had the enemy offered him those tallies at the outset, he would have accepted them gladly. “What of the Fifth and Sixth?” he asked. “Are Dengyn and Bannon here?”

“They are, with their divisions intact. As we suspected, the reavers clogging the egress west through the mountain pass are those who chased Laulk’s citizens eastward. Bannon arrived with the savages on his heels.”

The chief general felt a stab of recollection. “How about
our
savages? Do we know what became of
them
?”

Jasyn shook his head, confirming Corathel’s fears. “They did not appear
until the last of the shield wall was pouring into the city. They never would have made it.”

“You shut them out?” That dismayed him more so than his own guess, which had them perishing much earlier and farther to the east, when they had engaged the enemy so that
he
might reach the Wormroad.

“Their
choice, sir. I’d have held the portal for at least a handful of them, had they tried to fight their way through the Illychar ring. But they turned about, as if realizing what must happen should they make the attempt. I know not whether any escaped.”

He wasn’t sure why he had even dared hope, or why he found Jasyn’s news so distressing. They were only Mookla’ayans, after all. Still, when they had given their lives for his…

“I’m sorry, sir.”

Jasyn was no happier about it than he, judging by the lieutenant general’s somber expression. But there was little enough to be done about it now.

“It’s for the best, I’m sure. A Mookla’ayan within the walls might have been enough to incite a citywide riot.”

“May not take that much.”

Corathel frowned. “What do you mean?”

“A week ago, the people were hailing us as saviors, praising our courage and cunning. Word in the streets was that the chief general himself had come to liberate them, with reinforcements enough to crush the enemy without.”

“And now?”

“They’ve come to realize what we knew coming in, that our numbers, even when added to those of the Fifth and Sixth, are insufficient to break the siege.”

“Can they not merely be grateful that we hold against it?”

Jasyn shook his head, seeming suddenly, uncommonly haggard. “Just two days after our arrival, the reavers we battled at Atharvan caught up to us. Our spotters’ estimates vary widely, but the twenty or so we fought there has swelled to more than thirty on soldiers alone. Another horde, somewhat weaker and slower, arrived half a day later, numbering another thirty, by my guess.”

Weaker and slower.
“Civilians?”

“It looked that way. They moved on, heading south, but I daresay that group has unnerved this populace more than the fifty thousand or so who remain.”

Without being told, Corathel understood why. Fighting savages was one thing; fighting one’s own was quite another—as he himself had learned. This people had received a glimpse of the fate befallen their nation’s brothers and sisters—thousands of innocents just like them. In doing so, they had seen the horrifying truth of what awaited them all.

“They say now that if Atharvan fell, then Leaven has no chance.”

“Thirty thousand,” Corathel muttered. “It might be ten times that number had His Majesty not evacuated when he did, or had the main body of refugees been overtaken.”

“True enough, but scant cause for hope when we ourselves remain trapped, with twenty-eight holding out against fifty.”

What more did they expect of him? Corathel wondered. A suicide run like that which got his forces in would never work to get their entire populace out. And even if it did, his soldiers could not begin to protect them all out in the open against so many. The safest place for them was behind these walls, where one man upon the ramparts was worth five or ten below.

“What else are the people saying?” he asked.

Jasyn sighed. “They say we missed our chance, that we should have fled the city, south to Kuuria, before Leaven was surrounded. They say the odds against us will only worsen. Ours was the last aid that will arrive, they fear, and now seems paltry indeed against the enemy’s growing reserves.”

Corathel snorted. “They seem to have the right of it. Do they offer any solutions?”

“Some say we should surrender, if you can believe it—that if we do so, the reavers may show mercy. Others suggest bribes and parlays, thinking their freedom might be purchased. And there are those who insist that we must fight free now, whatever the cost, if
any
are to survive.”

“What, no thoughts of torching the entire city in order to save our souls from possession?” Corathel scoffed.

“The notion is out there,” Jasyn admitted, “though it has yet to win any real fervor.”

“Have they no faith in us whatsoever?”

Jasyn shrugged. “Some whisper that you perished in battle, and that the rest of us have no notion of what to do in your stead. The governor is a fool, they say, but common folk are quick to puff themselves up with such chatter. My concern is what happens should they decide to act upon it.”

“You think they will actually rise against us?”

“Against us, against one another, against their fear…I cannot say but that a man has his limits. And where one breaks, others will follow. You’ve seen it as often as I.”

“The governor must reassure them.”

“With what, the truth? As you say, they have almost as much of that as we. And should he lie to them, they will learn it, and he will lose their cooperation all the faster.”

Corathel’s jaw clenched. His wounds throbbed, though no more than his head. Even these most minor exertions had left him faint and exhausted. He did not yet have the strength to deal in any active way with all that Jasyn was telling him.

“We’ve talked, of course, of lengthening curfew, increasing city patrols, and jailing the most vocal dissenters,” the Second General went on. “But our troops are pressed sore as is upon the walls, and many fear that further restrictions upon the people will only fuel their unrest.”

Corathel laughed, though it triggered a whole new set of pains. “Leaving us to watch our backs against the very people we have come to protect.”

“The bulk of the Queen’s subjects still support us,” Jasyn assured him. “I don’t mean to suggest otherwise. Only to warn that if she falls, she’s as likely to do so from within as without.”

“Point taken. Have you any other good news for me?”

“Nothing you need fret over as yet. By the pallor of your skin, I’ve troubled you too long already. And Maltyk is likely wondering by now why I’ve not arrived to spell his command.”

“I would hear
his
views, as well. And those of the other generals.”

Jasyn nodded as he rose. “I’ll send pages, to make certain they received your chamberlain’s message.”