Well of Sorrows (69 page)

Colin lay in the dim light of the Tamaell’s tent and tried not to writhe in agony. His entire chest hurt, an ache that went deep inside his lungs, deeper still, and it throbbed with every slow pulse of his blood. Each breath, no matter how shallow, brought the pain to the fore, so that it felt as if he were lying on waves on the ocean, the pain swelling, then fading, rising and falling, like a ship at sea.

But the pain never fell far.

He knew he shouldn’t be awake. When he’d tried to kill himself in the forest, when he’d driven the knife into his heart, he hadn’t woken for days. Something had drawn him up out of sleep. He just didn’t know what.

He frowned up at the ceiling of the tent, undulating in the wind, and tried to focus, to pull his mind away from the pain. But it was too intense. He couldn’t shove it aside, couldn’t ignore it. Yet even through the pain he could sense something. A shift, a tingling in his skin, not the prickling sensation he’d felt before Walter had appeared and slit the Tamaell’s throat, but close. That had felt like a breeze, as if someone had just walked past him, someone he couldn’t see.

This tingling came from everywhere, seemed to be seeping up from the earth beneath him.

He concentrated, let the sensation course over him, hoping it would dull the pain, but then Moiran returned. Alone.

She carried something in her hand, her face fixed in a bleak frown.

“Where’s Eraeth?” he asked, still shocked at how weak his voice sounded. Exhaustion lay just beneath the pain. He’d felt it when he’d tried to lift himself upright, when he’d tried to leave.

Moiran hesitated, then moved closer. “He’s on the field, with Lord Aeren, acting as his Protector. It is his place. It’s where he should be.” She stood over him, watched his face intently. “Why?”

Colin tried not to grimace. “He has something that I need.”

“What?”

He turned toward her, searched her face. “A vial. It . . . would help heal me.”

“Is it the Blood of Aielan?” When Colin frowned in confusion, she added, “The water of the ruanavriell.”

Settling back, Colin shook his head. “No. This is . . . more powerful. More dangerous. I’m not even certain Eraeth would agree to give it to me.”

Moiran watched him a long moment, then sighed and put what was in her hand on his chest. “He said that if you asked, I was to give you this.”

Colin breathed in deep, could smell the Lifeblood now: wet earth and dead leaves, musky and sharp. He should have noticed it earlier, when Moiran arrived, but its scent had mingled with the strange prickling sensation coursing upward from the ground. But now the scent hung heavy, dug deep into his gut.

He raised his left arm, halted when he saw the swirl of darkness beneath the bared skin, the marks darker than bruises. He shuddered, recalling the thick swirl of black on Walter’s face. His lips pressed together as he pulled the protective cloth away to reveal the tiny flask within.

Moving slowly, carefully, he held the flask up to the light, peered into the clear liquid within, at what looked like water.

He could
feel
it, could sense the power behind it, the
presence.

And as it always did, that presence woke a depthless ache in him, sent tremors of pain coursing down his arm. Need filled him, a need he’d fought in the long weeks after leaving the forest, a need that he thought he’d finally conquered when he handed the flask over to Eraeth to protect.

He knew now that the need, the ache, would never go away, that he could bury it, but it would return as soon as he drew near the Lifeblood.

“What is it?” Moiran asked.

Colin turned, surprised to find her kneeling beside him. He hadn’t heard her move, too absorbed with the flask, with the power coursing through his arm, through his chest.

Through his blood.

“Open it,” he said, handing her the flask. He couldn’t open it himself, not with how tightly he’d sealed it, and not with one arm. He’d tried to lift the other, but the pain in his chest had been too harsh. “Open it carefully. Don’t spill any of it on yourself.”

“Why not?” Moiran asked.

“Because I don’t know what it will do to you.” She stared into his eyes, her own narrowing.

Then she unsealed the cap. “What will it do to you?”

“Heal me.” Which was a lie. It wouldn’t heal him, wouldn’t close the wound that bled in his chest, wouldn’t stitch skin and muscle and bone back together. That wasn’t the Lifeblood’s power. But it would take care of the pain . . . for a price.

Moiran glared at him. “You can’t stop this. You can’t halt the fighting. One man—”

“You’re right,” he interrupted. “I can’t end the battle . . . but there’s one man who can. And I can convince him. But I can’t do it from here.”

Her glare intensified—

And then, in a low, curt, bitter tone, she said, “Men.” She removed the cap.

The scent of the Lifeblood flooded the tent, a hundred times stronger than before, and Colin gasped, his entire body trembling now, the ache in his stomach almost as strong as the pain in his chest.

“Let me have it.”

Moiran handed the flask to him reluctantly. He held it reverentially before him, let the feel of its power wash over him, soothe him.

Then, with one quick gesture, he tipped it into his mouth, felt its coolness against his tongue, tasted its sweetness, its pureness—

And then he swallowed.

Nothing happened.

Aeren watched, tension bleeding down his arms, tightening across his shoulders, as Lotaern kept his arms raised.

And then the acolytes behind him began to move.

They fanned out, each group of four heading out from Lotaern’s position, radiating outward, like the rays of the sun. When they were fifty paces from the edge of the fighting, the groups of four broke apart, each acolyte facing the chaos of the lines. Each drew his cattan, nearly in unison, and Aeren realized that Lotaern was issuing orders. He could see the Chosen’s mouth moving, but the battle itself drowned out his words.

The acolytes held their cattans to the sky, then reversed them and drove their points into the ground with both hands on the hilts, kneeling as they did so, heads bowed.

“What are they doing?” Eraeth asked. Aeren shook his head, lips pursed.

Lotaern was still speaking. Aeren strained, tried to make out what was being said, but it was Eraeth who answered his own question.

“He’s chanting.”

“What?”

Eraeth stilled, drew and held a breath, concentrating. “Part of the Scripts.”

“They’re all chanting,” Aeren said abruptly. “They’re all chanting the same thing.”

Aeren felt it on the air first. A cessation of the winds, a silence beneath the rumbling roar of the fighting still taking place on all sides. Then the air . . . thickened. It pressed in around him, made it harder to breathe.

But even as this began to register, the ground trembled. Tremors coursed up through Aeren’s boots, shuddered through his feet into his legs, low at first, increasing steadily, until they couldn’t be ignored. On all sides, those at the edges of the fighting halted, stepped back, glanced around in confusion—

And the earth in front of the kneeling acolytes suddenly exploded skyward. Mud boiled, spewing up chunks of sod, clumps of dirt and roots and trampled grass, seething upward in a huge arc, as if something were trying to emerge from the ground itself, trying to shove its way free. Aeren caught glimpses of what lay beneath the churning surface: a white glow, vibrant and intense, so pure it hurt his eyes. The earth continued to fountain for a breath, two—

Then it began to push outward, away from the acolytes who still knelt, still chanted, heads bent. It plowed forward, mud and dirt erupting like geysers, shooting ten feet into the air, like spume from the ocean as it struck the rocky shore. It surged forward like the swell of a wave, rumbling through Aeren’s legs and up into his chest, juddering in his teeth.

The human men who had broken through the Alvritshai lines were caught by surprise, too stunned and confused to move. The boiling earth knocked them off of their feet, buried most beneath heaps of dirt, their screams cut short. Before each of them vanished, Aeren saw a tongue of that brilliant whiteness beneath the ground lick out, touch the person an instant before he was engulfed, as if tasting them. Then the arcing wave of moving earth reached the first Alvritshai. It flung them to the ground, but didn’t bury them, leaving them behind, shaken, struggling to rise.

“It’s Aielan’s Light,” Eraeth said suddenly. “The whiteness beneath the earth—it’s Aielan’s Light.”

Aeren’s brow creased skeptically—

But those Alvritshai near them had already heard. They whispered it beneath their breath, muttered prayers, gestured in awe, the reaction spreading outward.

On the field, the raging earth hit the most crowded parts of the battle, and at the same moment the acolytes rose from where they knelt, jerked their cattans free from the earth and pointed them toward the sky, and roared, “For Aielan! For the Order! For the Flame!”

Everyone in Aeren’s vicinity gasped.

The acolytes’ blades were limned with white light.

They rushed into the earth’s wake, pausing to kill any of the human forces who hadn’t been buried, their motions quick, merciless, hitting throat or heart before sprinting onward, into the heart of the fighting.

But the fighting had lurched to a halt, both Alvritshai and human forces stunned, even as the disturbed earth bore down on them. Some shook the shock off and began to run, fleeing toward their own lines or simply fleeing before the earth and the white light beneath. Many of the Alvritshai heard the acolytes’ war cry. To either side, Aeren felt his own men rallying, saw hands tightening on hilts, eyes hardening from shock to anger.

Thrusting his own cattan into the air, he bellowed, “For Aielan! For Rhyssal!”

And then he charged toward the nearest group of the Legion, whose attention was fixed on the approaching ridge of earth. His leg burned with pain from the knife wound and being twisted in the death of his horse, but Aeren killed two of the Legionnaires before they began to react, a few bringing swords to bear, still others breaking away toward the west. Aeren felt the writhing earth bearing down on him, felt the Legion he fought growing desperate—

And then it struck.

He was lifted off the ground, thrown by the force of the earth. Dirt pummeled him from all sides, flung so high and with such force that he could taste it. He breathed it in, choked and coughed on it, felt something lick up along his leg, felt its cold touch, felt it burning against his skin, recognized it as Aielan’s Light, as the same fire he had passed through to earn his pendant in the Order. Visions of that moment, of descending into the heart of the mountain beneath Caercaern, of traversing the empty halls and corridors, of marveling at the massive pillars, the carved stonework, the delicate stone stairs, flashed through his mind. But this was merely a taste of what he’d endured when he’d reached the final chamber, deeper even than the halls, hidden within the rough hewn catacombs below the ancient city where the pool of white fire blazed. There, he had submerged himself in the fire, allowed it to consume him, allowed himself to be exposed completely to Aielan and her judgment—

Then he was falling. He struck the ground hard, tumbled onto his side, spitting grit from his mouth, scrubbing it from his face. Alvritshai were coughing and hacking on all sides, a few groaning, holding their arms or legs where they’d twisted them on landing. Aeren dragged himself to his feet, wincing at the renewed pain in his leg, fresh blood staining his breeches, but he stumbled toward where a young human boy lay half buried in the sod, blood trickling from one corner of his mouth.

He never saw Aeren coming. His eyes were wide, staring off into the distance, tears streaming down his face, as he murmured, “I shouldn’t have taken the coin from Codger. I shouldn’t have taken the cart.”

Aeren hesitated.

A blade sank into the boy’s chest and Aeren spun.

Eraeth withdrew his cattan and met Aeren’s accusing glare stoically. “The battle isn’t over.” He motioned toward the plains behind them.

The wave of earth and white light had diminished. As Aeren watched, it threw up a few fitful geysers, as if it were gasping a last breath, and then it rumbled into stillness.

He glanced back at Lotaern in time to see the Chosen, arms still lifted, stagger, then fall, body crumpling.

Turning back, he gazed beyond where the earth had finally settled . . . and saw the remains of the Legion reserve. Hundreds of men, on foot and in the saddle, waiting for the order to attack. To the side, from the Tamaell Presumptive’s position, Alvritshai and Legion were picking themselves up and dusting themselves off.

Including King Stephan.

The leader of the coastline Provinces spat to one side, wiped his mouth on his sleeve, sword still clutched tight in his other hand . . . and then he gestured.

A lone runner raised a single flag and began waving it back and forth.

And the reserve unit began to move.