The Legend of Asahiel: Book 03 - The Divine Talisman (64 page)

“Annleia—”

“Pick it up,” she commanded again, eyes fixing upon him. They seemed just now to burn with an otherworldly fire. “You have had your say. Here is mine. I will not betray my mother’s gift by letting it go for naught. Nor will I allow you to use it as an excuse to give up. Would you atone for your sins? Then you will do so, by accompanying me as Ravar bade you. You will stop dwelling on the past, except to draw from it what strength you need to press forward and make things right. We will use this as further fuel to do what we must.”

He could feel her resolve—immutable, radiant. Why didn’t
he
have that kind of strength? Why was he so quick to wallow in misery and defeat?

There was no way to refuse her, even if he had wanted to. And, in that moment, he didn’t. In that moment, with her soul-enslaving gaze and those petulant lips, she could have demanded anything of him, and he would have surrendered it heedlessly.

“We still need a guide,” he managed softly.

Annleia blinked. “Crag has been working on that. His Hrothgari cousins do not know the ruins themselves, having long avoided them as unholy ground. But none could be better at bringing us to them. Once inside, we’ll have to make our way as best we can.”

Torin nodded. Her spell over him had broken. Even so, he felt a lingering connection that hadn’t been there before, as if some tiny spider had woven a single, delicate thread between them. For the first time, he felt truly bound to her in this, no matter the cost or consequence.

He licked at his cracked lips, and came away with the taste of bloodshed. He realized again how he appeared, caked head to heel in gore and grit. It reminded him of the pretense under which he had left Troy and the others.

“I should tell the commanders,” he said, eyes falling upon the Sword. He scooped it up into his palm. “I told them I would stay and fight.”

“Shall I go with you?”

He shook his head. “Find Crag. See what sort of escort he can put together to defend us along the trail.” He stood. Annleia held forth a hand. He looked at it, awash with guilt, then helped her to rise. “Remember Ravar’s words,” he added. “About those who accompany us.”

Annleia nodded. “Any who join us will be forewarned.” She started to turn away, then added, “Find a stream. You truly are filthy.”

She said it with just a hint of playfulness, he thought, though she did not look back as she set off down the rise. Either way, Torin could only marvel anew at her unflagging charity.

He was about to sheathe the Sword when he caught sight of a disturbance amid the camp lines. A company was returning from the front—and a sizable one at that. Torin wondered what it could mean. From what he knew, all rotations from the day’s conflict had been completed, battle-weary units replaced already with fresh reserves.

As they neared, however, he recognized them by their armor as Parthan, and his heart leapt.

A forward detachment made for the command tent. In the near darkness of cloud-smothered stars and sooty campfires, Torin could not tell who stood among them, save that the party consisted of both men and dwarves. He hastened down the rise, choked with anxiety, but needing to find out which of his former friends still lived.

“General!” he hailed, to those who came upon the sentries warding the tent’s entrance. At a distance, he still wasn’t sure, but the one who led them looked enough like Corathel to—

Torin froze as the group turned. A few looked about, still searching for the caller. Others had found him right away, including a towering pair of thin-limbed figures whose olive, tattooed skins all but blended into the surrounding night, but whose eyes shone with an animal gleam. Now that he saw them, Torin was suddenly transfixed.

“Torin,” Corathel greeted grimly. “I had word of your return. I’m sorry I was unable to meet with you before…” He trailed off as Cwingen U’uyen stepped forward, sliding past the general and his aides and lieutenants. A trio of Powaii also came forward, to stand with their chieftain.

Torin stood slack-jawed as U’uyen clacked and chirped, his strange speech punctuated by slicing gestures.

A moment’s silence followed.

“Allion tells me you know each other,” Corathel offered, a forgotten voice from behind U’uyen.

“He was my guide,” Torin breathed at last.

His appearance will leave no doubt. Already
,
he hunts for you.

In the murmur of the encampment, he imagined he heard the ocean, and that somewhere within, Ravar was mocking him.

W
ITH DAWN’S FIRST GRAY LIGHT,
Torin was finally able to peer down from the mountain and catch a glimpse of what he was leaving behind. The night before, while he and his company climbed the slopes under light of stars and glowstone lanterns, the pass below had been shrouded in darkness. Now, however, he could see the river, reforging its path along that ancient bed. To the west of that, the Illychar were a writhing swarm, busily collecting and warding the bodies that would serve to replenish their ranks. From there, looking south from the Gaperon and over a rugged stretch of stone shelf and grassy plain, he could still make out the lines and columns of the coalition’s defense, settled uneasily behind a twig nest of trenches and bulwarks and fortified rises.

So quiet
, he thought. So different from being down there, amid the carnage. From this god’s-eye vantage, he could almost imagine it all to be but pieces in some child’s game.

Behind him, he could feel U’uyen’s gaze. Since their reunion, the Powaii chieftain had scarcely let him out of sight. Given Corathel’s tale of how U’uyen and his clansmen had come upon the chief general and been defending him ever since, Torin had at first worried for his chances of swaying the Mookla’ayans to his cause. A needless concern, for it seemed
he
was the one U’uyen had truly been seeking all along.

“He was shown a vision of the chief general,” Annleia had explained upon joining them, interpreting for U’uyen himself. “Corathel, he was told, would eventually lead him to you.”

“But why search for me at all? How could he have known?”

“He was sent by…Her With Amethyst Eyes,” Annleia had answered, struggling with her translation of the native’s speech. “She visited him in a waking dream. In it, she showed him the fate that would befall his people should he refuse her task. He was honored to accept the charge, to be chosen among his people to help fulfill a long-standing prophecy.”

A chill had crawled up Torin’s spine at the telling. He’d met only one person with amethyst-colored eyes, one person whose continued involvement would account for so much—while at the same time raising new questions that, in all likelihood, no mortal could answer. That was how she lived her life. That was how she had worked from the very beginning.

Others in attendance had scowled or scoffed or called it savage gibberish. Corathel had accepted the news stoically, admitting that he would miss having
the natives around, and bidding Torin see them well cared for. None but Torin himself, it seemed, were unnerved by the further implications.

“Did she tell him what his purpose was?” he had asked. “Did she give hint of
our
purpose, or the perils we must face?”

“She told him what he needed to know,” was all Annleia could gather from the Powaii chieftain in response.

By then, Torin had been virtually aghast. “How easy would it have been for Corathel and me to miss one another? Did we ever have a choice? Does U’uyen? Nearly all of his original company are dead. How can he—”

“He’s here,” Crag had grumbled, “able and willing. The sea slug was right. Ain’t much use in dwelling on it further.”

Fine
, Torin had thought bitterly. Forget the nagging, unanswerable questions of fate versus will that he had once thought put to rest. But, to him, stumbling across U’uyen would seem to validate all else that Ravar had told them. And if the Powaii was to be his guide…

“Ravar warned us that numbers would not save us,” he had reminded Crag later on, when the Tuthari had introduced him to the score of Hrothgari set to join them in escort. “For one to press forward, He said, the rest must be consumed.”

“You’re thinking I’ve forgotten? You’re thinking Lei had me hide that bit from them? My kind, we don’t shirk a task due to foul weather or ill omen. I ain’t saying we disrespect such things, only that, if there’s a chore needs doing, we brave the elements to see it done.”

“I don’t want to hike east over a trail of fallen friends.”

“And I’m saying, we don’t go, might be you fail to find your way at all. Whatever the danger, I owe that lass and her mother a great favor, after what I did to them. Seems you do, too.”

With a lump in his throat, Torin had wondered if the dwarf spoke only of Aefengaard’s fall—of which he’d been told—or if Annleia had also shared with him the truth about Laressa. Torin didn’t think she’d done so. Otherwise, the Tuthari’s ire would have been much greater.

Or would it? In that moment, he’d been struck again by the inexplicable forgiveness granted him by those he’d met in Yawacor, versus that meted out so grudgingly by his closer, truer friends of Pentania. And Crag was one of the former.

“It be my decision to make,” the Tuthari had gone on to say. “And these have all been given their own. They know the risks, and what’s at stake. Children they ain’t. Don’t treat them as such.”

That was where the discussion had ended. In Torin’s mind, however, it had been churning ever since. For the most part, he had forced aside the many reflections on matters over which he had no control. Yet there was still the journey itself, and the dangers to be overcome. These, he had been mulling constantly throughout the night:
A spider’s web does not forbid entry
,
but escape
.
For one to press forward
,
the rest must be consumed. The greatest danger is that which lurks unseen.

The first clearly suggested an ambush. For this, he hadn’t even needed Ravar’s warning. He knew already of the goblin swarm that lay amid the Skullmars. It was from the ranks of this brood that he, as Itz lar Thrakkon, had culled the company that had flown with him across the seas. Two dozen, he had taken, from the thousands left behind. He had spoken of them already with Annleia, and she had agreed: If this was not the web Ravar referred to, then she shuddered to think what was.

The second and third warnings, however, were beyond his full understanding. If only
one
could press forward, it would have to be Annleia. None other could use the Orb to rebuild the seal. Did that mean Torin himself would have to surrender the Sword to her and send her off to finish her task alone? He wasn’t sure he could abandon her like that—not while he still drew breath.

Nor had he had much success envisioning this “unseen” foe to which the third warning referred. Who could know what sort of creatures had emerged alongside the Illysp from that wasted world? Or did the threat reference the Illysp themselves? So long as they hadn’t taken mortal form, what harm could those feral spirits truly inflict?

A nearby motion drew his attention. He turned, as did U’uyen, to find Annleia approaching the overlook upon which he stood.

“Did you sleep?” she asked him.

“Some.” He wasn’t entirely sure that was true. It seemed he’d tossed and turned upon the cold ground throughout the predawn hours in which they had finally determined to get some rest. The demons he grappled with would permit him no peace.

She stepped up to the ledge beside him, to gaze down upon the Gaperon below. “You’re not thinking of going back, I hope.”

He shook his head in steadfast reassurance. “Only wishing for another clue in unraveling Ravar’s riddles.”

“Patience,” she said. “You seek to ford a river before passing through the jungle.”

Torin frowned, but when he glanced at her, his frustration melted. Her eyes, directed west, were red and puffy, swollen with spent tears. As useless as
his
efforts at sleep had been, he could only imagine the torment that had marred hers.

“Should we wake the others, then?” he asked.

“We seem to be safe, at the moment. There’s no telling how long that might last. Let them rest while they can.”

One of the reasons they had started out last night, amid the dark, was to make sure they were well into the mountains before the Illychar had a chance to perhaps sneak up and close off the passes. Corathel’s run-in with giants during his rescue of Vashen’s rover crews had made them all doubly nervous. To hear the chief general tell it, only the Shia’s sudden flood, which had all but wiped out the hordes of Illychar giving chase, had enabled his regiment to survive that ambush.

Torin waited for her to say something more. When she did not, he allowed
his thoughts to drift. Truth be told, he’d been happy to trade the relative comforts of the encampment for the cold, barren elevations of the western Aspandels. The news of his impending departure had not been well received. Though the coalition commanders had done nothing to chide him openly, their disgruntlement was plain. Torin had grown tired of it. He did not fault them their feelings, yet fretting over them had availed him nothing. Let them keep their judgments. He had other, more critical matters to attend to.

His irritation had been strongest with Allion. Upon reentering the command tent with Corathel and U’uyen, he’d learned that his friend had already known of the elf’s presence. Allion could have told him of U’uyen way back when he had first reunited with the hunter in Wingport. Or else, he certainly might have done so during the briefing with Rogun and Troy before the battle, when Annleia had admitted their need for a guide to lead them through the ruins. Perhaps sharing this news would have made no difference in Torin’s decision to spurn Annleia and join the battle. U’uyen had already set forth with Corathel, after all. But it burned him to know that his friend had held his tongue, letting him think there was no other option but to risk the Sword and Annleia’s quest, when he might have let either of them know that the guide they required was most certainly among them.

It had left him to wonder if there was truly anything left to salvage of their former friendship—or any of the others he had once enjoyed upon these shores.

A chilling breeze whistled over the naked ledge, tossing Annleia’s hair and scraping like a razor across his own cheeks. High above, banks of clouds scudded ponderously across the sky, driven relentlessly by parent winds. Though the rising sun continued to etch out small details, a dim moon had not yet surrendered to its light.

In the same soft glow, Annleia’s fluttering locks reminded him of autumn leaves, tinged orange and russet and gold. Her cheeks, so full and smooth and devoid of blemish, bore a gentle, windblown rouge. Undeniably attractive, this one, though it had never mattered enough for him to acknowledge it before. Peering at her now through the corner of his eye, he saw traces of the same exotic beauty Laressa had possessed, the blush of her elven heritage shining through.

“I should thank you,” she said suddenly, feather-soft amid the morning quiet. “For telling me.”

Torin winced. He wondered which she had sensed: his subtle attentions or subtler thoughts. Whichever, the crisp mountain air seemed thinner than it had a moment before. “I never should have lied to you. I should have told you from the start.”

“You wished to spare me. I understand.”

Was that the only reason? It seemed now like there may have been another, like some part of him hadn’t wanted her to think ill of him.

“Had I known earlier,” she added, “I might…It might have changed things.”

She seemed hesitant, uncomfortable. Why should that be?
He
was the one who had done grievous wrong, and then tried to hide it from her.

She turned to examine him. “Sometimes, the truth can be too sharp to handle, and one must wait for the callus to build.”

Callus? What was she really speaking of? “You are much too forgiving,” he offered thickly, staring back at her.

Annleia held his gaze. Her own felt somehow imploring. “Now and again, one has to be.”

Her words, as well as her lingering look, seemed almost cryptic. He might have questioned her, but knew not what sort of answer to seek. Before he could decide, his attention was drawn to a heavy stumping along the path behind them.

“Everything all right?” Crag asked.

Torin and Annleia both turned inward, brushing into each other in the process. He hadn’t realized how close they really stood. Suddenly, he was aware of nothing else.

“Just considering the road to come,” Annleia replied.

Crag fixed them both with that pinched, sour expression of his. “Vashen’s rousing the others. Scouts are already moving. We’ll see this road better once we’re on it.”

At that, he wheeled about, headed back toward the shallow caves in which they had slept. With the way Annleia hesitated, Torin wondered if she might have something more to say to him. Instead, she only sniffed and followed after Crag, without so much as a backward glance.

Torin lingered but a moment, then traced her steps, U’uyen and his trio of Powaii falling in alongside.

“D
O YOU MEAN TO LEAVE
again without even saying good-bye?”

Allion froze, heart in his throat, hand deep in the leather sack in which he was arranging his meager provisions. He spoke without turning. “How did you know I was—”

“I didn’t. Tevarian asked me to come and speak with you. He claims to be tired of your sulking.”

Tevarian. Had the young archer been standing there, Allion would not have known whether to embrace him or throttle him.

“This,” Marisha said, “I did not expect. Has Troy assigned you some new mission, then?”

“Troy does not yet know,” Allion replied. He resumed his preparations, though he was no longer paying much attention to his own actions. “This is something
I
have to do.”

“You mean to pursue Torin.” She paused, as if giving him a chance to deny it. When he did not, she added, “May I ask why?”

He stopped his rummaging, turning at last to face her. Her hair was disheveled, her eyes dark-pooled and weary. Smears of her charges’ blood coated her arms and dress.

She had never looked more beautiful.

“Because I cannot in good conscience let him run off to do this thing—and risk bringing further disaster to us all.”

Marisha lifted an eyebrow in surprise. “Do you mean to aid him, or stop him?”

“Did you see him?” Allion asked. “While he was here, did you speak with him?”