Wings of Wrath (32 page)

“All the more reason to eat something.” He stared at her until she gave up with a sigh, and fished a hunk of cheese and a strip of salted meat out of the bag. He was right, damn it. “And yes, I think this is as far as the horses should go. I had some potions with me to calm their nerves down a bit—we use them often when we patrol this far north—but they're gone now.” His expression hardened. He didn't often speak of what had happened to him in the Citadel, but it was clear that Anukyat's betrayal of the Guardians' cause was something he could neither understand nor forgive.

He squatted down by her side and dug out a few strips of dried meat for his own breakfast. Nothing fancy today, nor anything that required preparation. His mind was elsewhere.

How like Andovan he looked right now, with the low-angled light of early morning setting his golden hair afire! When she had first noticed the resemblance she had thought it a quirk of her own sentiment, replacing the face of this warrior with that of her former consort and lover. But then one night Rhys had told her about his family history, so now she understood the truth. The same inheritance had molded them both; the same
lyr
blood ran in both their veins. Magical blood, he had told her. The stuff from which heroes were conjured.

Strange, how his voice became bitter when he said that. As if such an inheritance were a curse to him, rather than a gift. He was full of mysteries and bitterness, unlike the doomed prince who had been his nephew. That one had been half
lyr
as well, but it'd had no real meaning to him. His fate was meant to play out in the halls of kings, not in the lairs of monsters.

“So how close are we to this Spear thing?” she asked.

He hesitated. “Judging from the strength of the Wrath here, I would normally say less than a few hours' journey, but who knows? The curse used to be much more isolated; one could actually come within sight of a Spear before feeling its full power. Now?” He shrugged. “We will be there before nightfall, that much I'm sure of. Or at least as close as we are able to get to it.”

“I thought the Guardians repaired these things. Surely you can't do that from a distance?”

“There are the potions I told you of, and also special rituals, designed for that purpose. Sometimes the Magisters help with those, though you can tell how much they hate it. However, as I no longer have any of those things with me, we shall have to make do with simple courage.” He looked at her. “You don't have to come all the way, you know. You can wait here until I return. There's no shame in it.”

She could feel her expression harden. “I'm not a coward.”

“You're also not a Guardian. You have no duty driving you.”

But I have my own reasons for being here,
she thought.
And they are as valid as yours.

“I will go as far as I can,” she told him. And clearly he had learned enough of her nature by now not to argue with her further.

They left their camp as it was, pausing only briefly to smother the fire so that the surrounding forest would be safe. Rhys wrapped some of the food in a linen cloth and tucked it into his pocket, and both of them took their water skins, but otherwise they left the supplies behind. The message was clear, and chilling: if they did not come back within a day or two, they would not be coming back at all.

Rhys had fashioned lances on their second day of freedom, stripping two long, straight boughs of leaves and then sharpening the tips. Hardened by fire, they now made excellent walking sticks, and they helped Kamala keep her balance as they worked their way up the rocky hillside. They climbed without speaking, but not in silence. The voices were always there. Screaming in pain. Warning them to flee. Bearing witness to a suffering more terrible than anything they had known in their lives. Or so it seemed to Kamala.

Directly ahead.

What exactly are these Spears?
she had asked him during the first long day of riding.
Why does so much depend upon them?

We don't really know,
he had told her.
Tradition says that the gods cast them down from the heavens in the final days of the Great War, to affix a curse to the land. In the places where they struck the ground it was split open, and the blood of the Earth Mother spewed upward. When it cooled, it formed a shell about the Spear itself, protecting it. We keep the shells in good repair to protect what is inside them, so that the Wrath will remain strong and true, but I do not know of any man that has seen what is actually inside one, or heard any tale that hints at what they really are.

Terror.

Dark, cold waves of it. Rushing over her with a roar, filling her lungs, choking off her breath.

Go away!
The voices screamed at her.
Run! There is still time!

Magisters stirred in the shadows surrounding her, their fingers tracing signs in the air, weaving spells to entrap her. She refused to look at them. They were not real. The Wrath had summoned them once in a nightmare and now it had done so again in her waking moments, but they were still nothing more than an illusion that drew its strength from her deepest fears.

You don't understand!
the voices screamed.
You can't understand!
Magic clawed at the inside of her head like a wild animal in a trap.
Flee while you can! To stay here is death!

“Kamala!”

It took her a moment to sort out the one human voice from the cacophony. Rhys. She struggled to look at him—to focus upon him—and finally managed it. His own face was ghostly white, all color drained from it by the force of the supernatural assault. Did his
lyr
blood make him immune to the voices, did it quiet them enough that he could still think clearly? Or was he more sensitive to them than she was, more able to make out exact words and warnings, but somehow granted the spiritual fortitude to stand against them? His expression was dark and terrible, and for a moment she sensed how hard it was for him to focus on her when the source of the disturbance was right before them.

Then he took her hand and squeezed it. She shut her eyes and for a moment—a single moment—managed to focus her mind upon that contact, to draw strength from it.

Ahead of them was a vast plateau, flat and desolate. There were no trees within sight, only an endless tundra with a thin cover of scraggly grass punctuated by tangles of dry brush. In the center of it was a single butte, a flat-topped granite island rising up from a black and desolate sea. One whole side of it had been broken apart, leaving a huge concave gap in its side. Winter's ice, perhaps, shattering the ancient stone.

Atop it was the Spear.

It stood twice as tall as a man, or perhaps even taller, a monument of mottled stone that seemed alien to everything around it. Its surface was a malformed, tortured shape, as if a cone of rock had somehow been stretched and twisted out of all natural proportion. It had probably been located in the center of the butte at one point, but centuries of erosion had worn the structure away at its base, and now that one whole side of the butte had broken away, it no longer had the support required to sustain itself. The lower portion of one side had broken open, revealing a hollow interior. Some of the rocks that had fallen were suspiciously regular in form, Kamala noted. Bricks? Whatever lay beyond them, inside the spire, was hidden in darkness. Maybe that was because the sun was on the wrong side for visibility. Or maybe it would have been dark inside the thing regardless.

“Broken,” Rhys whispered hoarsely. Strangely, the terrible screaming that had been with them for hours now did not drown out human sound; Kamala could hear the clear note of disbelief that was in his voice. Whatever sort of damage the Guardians usually repaired, it was clearly nothing on this scale. “No wonder the Wrath was disrupted.”

“You can repair it, yes?” When he said nothing she pressed, “Isn't that what Guardians do?”

He did not answer her, only stared at the thing for a moment longer, and then, with a grim look upon his face, began to make his way forward, toward the shattered spire. She wanted to follow him—she tried to follow him—but she could not make her body obey her. Every time she tried to force one of her legs to move, to take a step forward, the power of the Wrath would wash over her in a wave, and it took all her courage not to turn around and flee from the place in mindless terror. If she stood still, if she made no effort to approach, it was tolerable, albeit by a slim margin. Her whole body shook from the force of it, but at least she did not run away.

She watched in fascination as Rhys slowly approached the butte. He sounded like he was muttering prayers under his breath; asking his gods for protection, perhaps? Weren't they supposedly the ones that had created this thing in the first place? The ghostly voices flowed over him, screaming their warning, but they could not turn him away, or even slow his steps. Was his
lyr
blood shielding him from the worst of their assault, or was his sense of duty simply stronger than his fear?

She watched as he reached the butte at last and climbed to the top of it, then approached the Spear itself. Though the damage was on the side of the spire, he approached it from the front; perhaps that was the path of least magical resistance, she thought. She could see him trembling as he finally knelt down by the opening to see what was inside, though whether that was because of fear, or simply the physical strain of the last few days catching up with him, Kamala could not begin to guess.

And then he drew back suddenly, as if shocked. He wrapped his arms tightly about himself; his body began to shake violently. It was as if some power had taken hold of him and he could not break free.

Long minutes passed. Fear whipped around Kamala like a whirlwind. Still Rhys remained as he was, arms clutched over his midriff as if there were some unbearable pain centered there. He was no longer moving, but frozen in place. It was an eerie, inhuman stillness. As if he were carved from the same stone as the monument before him.

Time passed. The sun shifted its position. The voices screamed in Kamala's brain with such force that it brought tears to her eyes.

Still Rhys did not move.

Something was wrong, Kamala realized. Something all his training had not prepared him for.

She was going to have to go to him.

She tried to take a step forward, but it was like trying to walk in a hurricane. Black emotions came rushing across the open tundra, howling as they enveloped her. Shutting her eyes, she used the skills that Ethanus had drilled into her to try to focus her mind inward, to regain control of her flesh.
Go back!
the voices screamed at her.
Death is here! Turn and run!
But Rhys was not running away, and so she would not either.

Shutting her eyes for a moment, she summoned the memory of his hand holding hers. The warmth that had flowed through his touch. His protectiveness. The source of that warmth was up ahead, and it needed her. The knowledge she sought was up ahead, and he was guarding it. The voices could scream their warnings all they liked; the magic of this place could fill her head with illusions and pain; none of that would keep her from going to him.

Move!
she commanded herself. Forcing her limbs to obey. Slowly, torturously, one leg moved forward. Then the other. Raw emotions battered at her soul as she moved, wave after wave of sorcerous assault.
Hunger. Pain. Fear
. She struggled to stay focused on her body and on the few feet of black earth just ahead of her. At least the ground was solid here; thank the gods for small favors. After days of riding across mountains and through rivers, that was a veritable luxury.

Time ceased to exist. So did the voices. Ethanus had taught her how to focus inside herself in preparation for the day when her First Transition would require such skills; now she applied them here. Illusions of pain ripped through her flesh, but she knew them for what they were and ignored them. Shadowy figures draped in black robes reached out with their sorcery to bind her, but she refused to acknowledge their existence. Somewhere a creature was starving to death, and its hunger reverberated within her flesh as if it were her own; she focused upon moving her feet, one after the other, and keeping her balance as she did so. If the Wrath overcame her now and she fell, she was not all that sure she would be able to rise up again.