The Legend of Asahiel: Book 03 - The Divine Talisman (34 page)

“Go, then. Or have you forgotten what ill fortune it is to visit a fellow soldier’s sickbed prior to battle?”

His friend grinned, all knavish enthusiasm once more. “It’s good to see you awake, sir.”

“And you at all,” he tendered in reply, then added, “If you must die out there today, try not to stop halfway. This bed’s not nearly as comfortable as it may appear.”

“Only because you lack the proper company,” Jasyn suggested wryly. He gave a wink before taking his leave.

Corathel had much to ponder when the other had gone. His mind rolled back through their briefing, and at each step, he thought of further questions he might have asked, or counsel he might have given. He hoped his injuries had not dulled his wits permanently.

At the same time, much could be assumed, and many of his own thoughts were better left unsaid. He only hoped the city would hold itself together until he was given another chance to contribute to its defense.

The idea brought him full circle, back to Jasyn’s initial greeting. Indeed, even he had to marvel at his latest revival, all the more unlikely given his recent string of narrow escapes. It was beginning to seem as though he could not be killed…which caused him to wonder if, after this, he had any luck left. Were this a game of dice, he would have gladly quit with gains in hand.

But there was no walking away while the game wore on. So he took heart where he could. Despite all that lay ahead, his plan to come this far had been a success. The majority of his troops had survived a seemingly hopeless incursion. Though mournful of the fallen, he would have the rest at his side to fight another day.

Tortured still by the lingering images and sensations of his ghostly dream-ride, Corathel supposed he might be happier should that day never arrive.

S
IMMERING IN THE FIRE OF
his misery, Torin sought to lose himself in his surroundings. The gray morning enveloped him, skies swollen with the promise of rain. A stiff wind tore at his bloodied jerkin, slicing through its thick fibers to scrape with icy claws upon his numbed skin. He and his fiendish company flew low to the ground, skimming the tops of trees whose damp boughs shuddered in the wake of his passing. The fissured slopes of the Dragontails were a wall to the east. Torin tried to see in them the tranquillity of an immutable earth, to partake of their boundless calm.

Yet nothing could quench the flames devouring him from within. The pain was too great, the shame overwhelming, and the terror seizing his heart refused to let go.

What he had done to his people, reprehensible. To Laressa, beyond forgiveness. What he was about to do…anguish.

If only he could shriek forth his sorrow and self-loathing. If only he could confess to the world his remorse and hatred for what he had done, to call down a divine vengeance upon his own head. It had been
his
sword arm that slew Laressa,
his
commands that had spurred the slaughter of her people. He alone had butchered the Finlorians. He alone was responsible for their annihilation. Just as he would soon be responsible for the destruction of all that he loved, all that he had left to treasure in this wretched existence.

He could not believe he had let slip the name of the city toward which he now flew. His hold upon the remaining pieces of his past was weakening. With every diabolical deed, Itz lar Thrakkon’s strength over him grew. More and more, Torin felt himself being torn asunder, surrendering to the Illysp’s will. But, for all he knew, he still had friends at Neak-Thur, friends he had vowed to set free. Despite his bitter defeat upon its outer fields, the city itself had become a symbol in his mind, representing this land and those inhabitants he had grown to cherish.

If ever he meant to resist and overthrow his Illysp master, now was the time.

He had tried at once to withdraw the city’s name, before realizing that it mattered not. Thrakkon already had an idea of where it lay, and a sense of its significance upon these shores. Even if Torin could find a way to influence the Illysp’s vile aims, he knew of no other target that might satisfy the creature’s hunger.

His
hunger.

He’d been given little chance to do so, in any case. Three days, he had expected, for surely Thrakkon meant to wait for the Finlorian dead to rise again
before venturing south. Instead, he had found himself mounting Killangrathor before the blood of the slain had dried, winging up and away with his pack of giants and goblins, not one of which had suffered casualty beyond the two lost during the dragon’s descent. And how
could
they have? Laressa and her people had not even been armed.

South he had flown, before the sun had finished rising, fighting with every fiber of his twisted essence to alter the truth.
North!
he had screamed into the vast hollow of his mental shell.
East or west. There is nothing at Neak-Thur. Nothing and no one.

But Thrakkon only gritted his teeth and snarled at the wind. The Illysp did not hear him, or if it did, ignored his pleas. He had to bring the other down, Torin knew, had to bring
himself
down before he could cause any more harm.

The hopelessness of that led him to deny that any of this was happening. As the Finlorian dell bled into the mists behind him, Torin told himself that the elven massacre was but one more episode in a long, perverse nightmare. Men did not rise from their graves. His was an eternal slumber as his body went to worms wherever it had been laid to rest. The remainder was merely a mind’s refusal to let go, to accept that the struggle had ended and that nothing more would be achieved.

But even that thought caused him pain. For it meant that Dyanne was truly lost to him. Did she even remember him? he wondered. Did she ever think of him, as he thought perpetually of her? What might she be doing at this very moment?

He might not have to ask, he answered himself, bitter with self-derision, were he there at her side. He could have stayed. Even if she had never grown to care for him, he could have been near her, gazing unnoticed upon her beauty and charm. He need not be suffering this desperate, childish yearning. He’d had only to open his mouth, to say the words, to speak his heart and mind and respect her right to respond in whatever manner she chose. It might have given him closure, at least. It might have allowed his soul a more peaceful rest.

He had been too cautious, fearing that anything he might say would only drive her further from him. Unwilling to accept what he might lose, he had refused to lay wager on that which he might gain.

But what had they truly shared? In all the time he had known her, their conversations would not have filled a day. What was it that he guarded so closely as to paralyze himself against seeking more?

He remembered Traver, a mere rogue who had elicited from the woman more words and smiles in a matter of hours than Torin had in weeks. Even now, he burned at the recollection of seeing her beside him—the attentions she had granted him. Why hadn’t he been able to draw her eye in a similar way?

Not that it should matter, then or now. His opportunity had passed. Only his memory of her remained, a parade of images that sparkled and shone like the glimmering facets of a spinning jewel. She was gone, returned south by now to her forest home, to rove the Widowwood among her kinmate and
sister and friends. Enjoying freedom and happiness in a region far removed from the chaos and slaughter that he—

He smothered the thought at once, seeking to bury it in the deepest recesses of his shattered mind. For the same part of him that would not let him dwell on the unattainable would suffer no sway from his delusions of death and slumber. Dreams did not offer the shriek of wind, the sting of raindrops, or the smells of earth and sea. That part of him that would not be deceived understood how and why he had been born anew, and knew as well that as long as he bore knowledge of Dyanne’s existence, he endangered both her and her fellow Fenwa. Though they represented a beacon in his world of darkness, the only way to spare them, he knew, was to somehow forget them forever.

By then, the smell of the sea was strong enough that he could taste it. They continued to skirt the mountains, which huddled tight in their eternal council, hunched backs and snow-capped shoulders turned against the world. An intruding fog pressed them from the west, shrouding the land below in swirls of spun cotton. Torin hoped it would be enough to hide their destination from view.

But fell winds had other ideas. Driving from the west, they chased the fog and trapped it against the mountain foothills, there to cower in caves and crevasses and hollows. A black rain began to fall from churning gray clouds, forming beaded curtains against the horizon, but serving to further dissolve the fog below. Whitecaps roiled against a stony coastline, flinging spray toward sandswept fields of sword grass beyond. With the way the lines of mountain and sea were converging…

Thrakkon must have been thinking the same, for Torin’s gaze traced those lines south until it snagged upon a shadowy gray hulk that tumbled like a rockslide out of the mountains, clear to the ocean shore. But no rockslide stood so straight and tall and narrow, uniform from foot to base. Tiny shadows moved upon it and in a line underneath, like ants scurrying across a bleached piece of driftwood. And there again, just beyond, nestled in a southerly line upon the Dragontails’ western face, a pile of the same. Twigs and branches, loosely stacked, aswarm with ants and the tiny sparks of their watch fires.

Only, ants did not build watch fires.

The realization pierced him within. He wasn’t ready. He hadn’t yet—

Neak-Thur.

Somehow, the long-anticipated sight caught him unawares, stirring memories both fond and foul. It had been here that he had traveled with Dyanne and Holly, here that he had battled alongside General Chamaar, Gilden, Arn, Bardik, Jaik, and so many others—battlefield comrades left to rot in Lorre’s clutches. It had been within the dungeons of Neak-Thur that he had met and been misled by Saena, and in the halls above where he had finally been charged by her overlord to complete the hunt that had brought him to these shores. He had left knowing that within these walls were more scores to be settled than he could count—resolutions set aside for the sake of his greater quest. He had sworn then to return, and return he had.

To destroy it all.

In the distance, Torin saw a flash amid the midday clouds, followed swiftly by a rumble of thunder.
Strike me!
he thought, pleading. Let a stream of lightning serve as his chariot to the Abyss. But Killangrathor only hissed and beat his wings, while Torin’s own lips drew back in a predatory smile, the cruel sentiments of his Illysp master shining through to smother his own.

How weak he had become! His tortured essence thrashed and screamed and shook, overcome with grief and guilt and helpless, agonizing frustration. Atharvan, Aefengaard, and now Neak-Thur. How could he put a stop to the slaughter when he could not even control the expressions of his face?

Killangrathor’s speed quickened in anticipation, and the first cries of alarm rang out from the doomed city. The clangor of bells and the moan of horns resounded over the restless groan of the sea. Torin’s gaze fixed upon that slate-gray expanse of wind and waves, as if expecting it to rear up and swallow him whole. Would that it might, he thought—even if it meant taking half the land with him. Alas, though the ocean heaved against the jagged shore, shimmering dully in the light of a cloud-choked sun, the iron rocks held it at bay.

He turned, then, as a missile whistled past. Giant spears, he realized, launched from ballistae mounted atop the Bastion. The massive bulwark bristled with these and other armaments, its sole purpose to defend the Southland against assailants from the north. For a moment, Torin took heart, thinking that Thrakkon and his minions would not find these soldiers such easy prey.

Below, however, the ants were already scattering. A line of travelers, Torin realized, upon the highway. Killangrathor veered low enough that Torin heard their screams over the gale of his own swift passage. With a tail whip, the dragon sent wagons and carts and bodies sailing, like filling the air with a shovelful of sand.

Torin felt himself grin, then urge the dragon up again. Another volley of spears came at them, but Killangrathor beat his wings to swat the missiles away. While those upon the ground raced for what cover they could find, soldiers upon the battlements scrambled into and around one another in a sudden flurry. Some fled while others armed themselves. Some continued to ring the alarm while others could only gape in horror. All, above and below, was chaos and confusion.

Amid a continuing chorus of screams, Killangrathor crashed feetfirst atop the yawning gatehouse, raking with claws still caked in elven blood. Soldiers scurried for cover, but found none, as the dragon plowed through ranks of men and limestone bunkers alike. Merlons shattered and crumbled, while bodies and blocks and mortar tumbled to the earth in broken chunks and ragged pieces. Killangrathor’s feet bit deep into the edge of the rampart, carving gouges wherever claw met stone. His wings spread wide, and his roar mocked the heavens’ feeble thunder. A lightning strike unleashed by his tail opened a gaping cleft in the battlement’s surface, and caused a phalanx of swordsmen to vanish.

The tremors of the attack swept the length of the Bastion, clear to where
it connected with the meandering curtain wall of Neak-Thur itself. Through eyes no longer his, Torin saw upon that mountainside the sprawling, randomly constructed buildings of the city proper, and but a few of the untold number of inhabitants jostling madly within. Carcasses all, he reflected, set to lie crushed amid mounds of rubble upon the next fogswept dawn.

Torin would have
shut
his eyes, had he been able, though doing so would not have saved him from the screams—cries that resonated with his own horror and denial. A powerful wind gained strength from the south, bearing with it a thickening rainfall. Dark clouds hung brooding over the city, though a break above the Bastion allowed the sun to shine clear and bright, momentarily, over the carnage below. In the midst of these meaningless sensations, battered by a tempest of emotions, Torin, lord of the Illysp, sat helplessly, drowning in the fury of it all.

A
NNLEIA GRIPPED THE STONE SILL
with a white-knuckled grip. The glass she peered through was streaked with rain and bowed by wind, clouded with salt stains and rimmed with algae. But the image it showed her was clear enough. Not in her darkest fears had she imagined this. Below and to the west, where the Bastion cut its line toward the sea, her grandfather’s patrolmen were being swatted like flies by a beast few believed could exist. Such power, she marveled. Such magnificence. For a creature of such immensity and strength to move as it did…To tear through stone as if it were sand, while possessed of such supple grace and devastating swiftness…

Saena, standing agape beside her, gave a pained squeak and covered her mouth as a clutch of charging soldiers went flying, flung skyward like debris at the edge of a tornado. The beast roared, and their window shook, more than a mile removed. The very stones of the citadel seemed to tremble beneath their feet. Horns blared, bells tolled, bodies shrieked and pointed and raced panic-stricken through the streets. Already, soldiers were marshaling, the first waves forming up on the city walls and before its gates. And all Annleia could do was stand there at her window, mesmerized by the dragon’s fluid movements and serpentlike reflexes, a horror black and dreadful and awesome and majestic and undeniably beautiful…

Nor was it alone, she realized abruptly. Upon its back, attached like growths to its spines, were riders, dark and tiny and unknowable. Save one.