Bear Knight, page 25
“I think so.”
“Know so, my friend. Believe it. For now is the time.”
With that, he lets go of me and races for the trees.
I run too, but I’m falling behind. His legs are powerful, his stride long. “Shan!”
Can he hear my rasping cry?
“Hurry, Hosal. Find the strength. You can do it!”
He’s in the trees. I’ve lost him.
No. The moment the light changes in the pines, I find him again—not much more than a disturbance in the fog. It is Shan, not a ghost. I know this because the apparitions move with the fog more than through it.
“Keep going!” he calls. “I counted the paces and set the courses as you showed me. Follow my steps, and you’ll make it. We’ll make it together!”
He reaches the outer fence, and more planks must fall. These, he did not prepare, and tearing them down slows him. I close the distance, but soon we’re through, and I’m falling behind again. My legs are giving way. I wore them out on the steps from the dragon’s throne room.
“What if I lose you?”
“Find the shrine and head east—always east, until you come to a low stone wall. Follow the wall south to the ruins of a twisted tower. I saw it on my last run. You can’t miss it.”
The shrine. East to the wall. South to the tower.
“Keep running! I’ll meet you there!”
Within moments, Shan is far out of reach, at the ragged edge of my vision.
I remember no shrine in our previous excursion. But if I ask now, he’ll never hear me. My lungs haven’t the strength to shout. My voice is worthless.
The disturbance in the fog turns sharply, toward a creature looming out of the gray.
Not a creature. A statue—a dragon half the full size, backed by a triangle arch and surrounded by torches. It is the image of Lord Valshadox himself. I know this by the fear welling up inside. A shrine to the master of this forest? I fixate on the torches as I draw closer. Dim and yellow orange. Weak flame. I suppose that’s why I didn’t see them sooner. But even as the thought occurs to me, the torches spark and flare ruby red.
He’s coming.
I look to the sky in time to see a black shadow soaring on broad wings. Diving for the trees.
The voice bellows in my mind. Fools. Ingrates. You will pay.
I try to warn my friend. “Dragon!”
My cry is too frail and far too late. Fire splits the forest at the place I last saw my friend.
47
TEEGAN
KELEDEV
PELLION’S FLOW
Teegan spotted Pedrig on his return from scouting the flow—a blur of shifting silver among the rocks skirting the edge of the ice. She walked in a crouch past Dag and Quinton to Master Jairun. “Here he comes. I’m afraid the news is not good.”
The headmaster followed her gaze and grunted. “Pedrig always looks grim.”
“He does, but I think I’ve learned to read him. Let’s hope this time I’m wrong.”
She wasn’t.
“Our dark creature invaders have taken to the open ice south of the den,” the wolf said when he reached them. “They are forming ranks. Goblins, golmogs, and iceblades—a hundred or more so far and growing in number. They know we’re coming, and they’re ready.”
Baldomar planted the tip of his two-handed greatsword in the ice. “So much for surprise. Now what?”
Teegan surveyed their group. From the cadet ranks, they’d brought Dag and Paskin plus four younger cadets Master Jairun had selected. From the guardians of the light, Silvana, Quinton, Baldomar, and the headmaster himself. She shook her head. “We’re too few.”
Quinton snorted. “Not for a pack of goblins.”
That earned him a dour look from Silvana. “This is no time for the Vanguard’s bravado. These are not cave goblins on sunlit snow. We’re facing frost goblins on their favorite terrain with dark approaching fast. Razor sharp north trolls and golmogs too. The danger is great. And if we’re defeated, will they not march to Ras Telesar and find it poorly defended?”
Dag frowned and adjusted one of the big satchels hanging from the shoulder posts of his manykit—playing the party mule as always. “What of the watchmen?”
Master Jairun turned his gaze to the south. “I sent ravens. The company at Ravencrest is nearest. If we wait for them, we’ll have a little less than the numbers we need.”
“If we wait,” Quinton said, “the dark creature numbers may double. Or worse.” He cast a fleeting glance at the young cadets at the end of their column. “I wouldn’t choose this battle for any new recruits to cut their teeth on, not ours and especially not watchmen who’ve never trained with the Order.”
Silvana drew a frustrated breath, as if about to offer argument, but Master Jairun cut her off. “He’s right, Silvana. And so are you. We cannot wait. But neither can we face them on the ice with such a small number.”
“So, what do you propose?”
“We must flank them. Find a way to get behind the creatures and drive them south into the rocky terrain. This will spread them out, which is a risk but also makes them easier for the watchmen to sweep up. It’s the only way to avoid a bloody ending.”
Pedrig padded his way down from the rock where he’d been perched, looking north, since his return. “I may have a way. In my scouting, I found an entrance to another ice passage. The flow shifts fast in spring. This one may lead to a dead end, but if it’s still good—”
“We could use their own tunnels against them,” Quinton said.
“Just so. We might destroy their den, cutting off escape, and then attack from upslope. The mountain is steep”—the wolf traded a glance with Master Jairun—“and the shadow of the ox lies upon their rearguard.”
The shadow of the ox. Teegan could not imagine any ox this high on the peaks. But neither Pedrig nor Master Jairun said more about it. The headmaster gave him a single nod. “As good a plan as any. And better than most. Show us this passage.”
The party stayed low and moved at a careful pace, keeping watch for the enemy’s scouts and preserving their strength. To aid them, Master Belen had given all the raiders one of his recent inventions. He called it an air bladder and told them it provided nothing more than air as warm and thick as they might find on the islands known as the Many Blessings in the far south of Keledev, but such air would be vital on the mountainside. They each wore an eberlast bladder between their tunics and manykit vests with intestine piping running up to their noses. Inside the bladder, a lump of diver’s folly—a false gold that grew violent when removed from seawater—boiled in a renewer’s wound-wash called bluebitter. The smell bordered on torture, but Teegan could not argue with the extra strength the thicker air gave her. Plus, the reaction spread heat under her cloak to stave off the cold.
“This is a risk,” Silvana said, cautioning Master Jairun at the entrance to the ice passage. “If we’re seen—if a runner escapes a confrontation and warns the others—they might bring the ice flow down on top of us.”
Quinton patted a large pitch torch slung at his side. Every party member had brought one at Master Jairun’s command. “These might do the same. The fire will crack the ice. We hadn’t planned on entering the tunnels so soon. Torches will do us no good until we reach solid rock.”
“Then we’ll look to a better source of light.” Master Jairun closed his eyes and uttered a prayer. A blue orb appeared ahead of him in the passage. He set off with Pedrig at his side. “We must trust the Maker. Whatever happens tonight, the victory is his.” He pointed at the light with his staff. “The Rescuer is with us.”
The others followed him in, two by two, responding in quiet unison. “Always and forever.”
Pedrig left the same glowing tracks as before. Teegan, marching with Dag at the column rear, watched them fall behind her into the dark. On her last visit to these goblin ice tunnels, she’d been drenched in runoff without the benefit of Belen’s apparatus to warm her. Yet now, watching Pedrig’s tracks disappear into the long dark, she felt a deeper chill. These creatures might be soulless dragon corruptions, but their masters were cunning.
The dragons had a plan to take Keledev, and it likely began with the slaughter of the Lightraider Order.
48
Teegan trusted Master Jairun and Pedrig to find the way. The wolf had been to the den with her, and the headmaster, though a guardian of the Comforters’ Sphere, was known to have discernment to match the best of the navigators. They’d find the den, assuming the dark creatures let them get that far. Every cross tunnel heightened her concern. An attack from both sides in the narrow passage would force all the fighting upon the front and rear guards.
“We must reach the den soon,” she muttered to Dag, growing impatient, “where we can remove our ice spikes and fight on wider terrain. And we must reach it undiscovered.”
It proved a vain hope.
“Look out!” The shout came from the column’s front—the headmaster’s voice.
Then Silvana’s. “They’re bolting! Pedrig, clear the way!”
With the big forms of Dag, Quinton, and Baldomar all between her and the fighting—along with Paskin and the four younger cadets—Teegan could make out little. She pressed a cheek against the ice wall and saw Silvana unleash two arrows at the same time.
“They’re down,” the headmaster said. “Quickly, Pedrig. Make sure there were no others.”
Teegan laid a hand on Dag’s back as he advanced, to let him know she was with him. “What’s happening up there?”
“Three goblins entered from a side tunnel. They’re dead. Pedrig is looking for others. We’re forming up.”
“Hold here.” Master Jairun gathered his force where the side tunnel intersected theirs. “There may be more.”
The party formed a knot beneath the Rescuer’s orb of blue light. Paskin held close to Teegan’s shoulder. “Are they coming?”
“I don’t know.”
“Quiet,” Silvana said. “All of you. Listen.”
Not an easy command, given the pounding of Teegan’s heart. She begged it to be still. A verse from her studies came to her, a reminder for Keledan to open their ears to what the Rescuer might show them. Nim ewanond oku nelam. Thomesh ewanond yi thimah ka oltum lemoth luminatem. He awakens me each morning—to listen as one being instructed.
Her heartbeat stilled. She listened to the silence of the tunnels and heard the echoing drip, drip of water and the near-imperceptible crack and ping of the flow in its eternal movement. Then she heard the heavy breath and scraping claws of a wolf racing back to them on the ice.
“Arms!” Pedrig barked from the other tunnel. “Arms! Here they come!”
Through the knot of raiders, Teegan watched him skid to a turning stop beside Quinton. He faced the way he’d come and let out a deep howl. Green flashed around them. The ice flow shook, and chunks of it rained down. Creatures shrieked in the dark.
“Careful, Master Wolf,” Silvana said.
“I am always careful. But I will do what I must.”
Those were the last words spoken before the goblins struck.
They attacked from two angles, from the side tunnel and from the main passage at the column’s front, putting the brunt of the fighting on Baldomar and Master Jairun at one part and Quinton and Pedrig at the other. Silvana stood between them and loosed arrows in both directions, shooting between their shoulders and over the wolf when she could.
“Agh!” Dag shouted, shaking his axes. “We’re out of it.”
He started to push his way through the four other cadets, but Teegan grabbed his cloak. “Our place is here. The goblins know these tunnels. They must connect somewhere behind us.”
Dag relented, and both of them stood at the ready in this strange waiting, listening to the guardians fight the creatures while they stood idle, watching the passage behind.
“Come on,” Teegan said under her breath. “Where are you?”
But the passage remained dark and empty—nothing but Pedrig’s glowing footprints.
Paskin stuck his head between their elbows, as if peeking out from a bush. “Huh. Perhaps they haven’t the numbers to spare.”
She glanced down, ready to push him back by the forehead, but paused.
Paskin’s eyes had gone wide. “What is that?”
Teegan followed his gaze. Living black threads writhed through the ice ceiling. They were in the walls, too, and the floor.
“Rime runners!” Dag said. “Ice leeches. Frost goblin pets. I read about them in The Battle of Agam Glas.” He pressed the newer cadets back. “Don’t let them latch on to open skin. They burrow under.”
Teegan groaned. “Of course they do.”
The first wave burst from the roof, boring white holes and wriggling out. The knot formation behind the guardians instantly broke as the cadets ducked and dodged. Teegan caught several leeches with her tines and flicked them away. Paskin sliced one in half with his sword, and the moment the two pieces landed, they launched themselves at his boots. Dag chopped into the ice walls on both sides, but the gouges he made only released more attackers.
One of the cadets called out to warn the fighting guardians. “Headmaster! The worms!”
Without turning from his fight, Master Jairun shouted in the Elder Tongue. The Rescuer’s blue orb burst into a broad dome that shone over him and the others. The falling rime runners burned to dust upon it. “We are harried at the front, Cadets. Deal with these parasites as you can!”
The writhing creatures now covered the floor. Dag stomped, grinding some into slop, but others swarmed up his legs. He let out a cry like none Teegan had ever heard from him and swatted them down—a losing effort.
“Too many!” she yelled, fighting them back in the same way. “What do we do?”
Dag continued swatting at his own boots. “At Agam Glas, Lady Olaya used fire.”
The torches. But could she spare the time to pull out a flint and steel and strike one? Would lighting fires bring the whole ice flow down?
Before she could try, Teegan saw Paskin draw his dagger and stab into his own side. She feared the leeches had bored into him and driven him mad, until she saw him reach in and pull out a dull gold rock. He’d cut the diver’s folly from his air bladder. Exposed, the rock began to burn. Paskin yelped and tossed it down, where it exploded into a shower of debris and purple sparks. The leeches hissed and shriveled around it. And wherever the remaining pieces of the diver’s folly dropped, they also exploded, killing more.
Taking her chance, Teegan drew her torch and lit it on a sizzling fragment. The pitch flared to life. She waved the flame at her feet and cooked the vile worms. “Your torches! All of you!”
Dag matched her actions, and the others quickly followed. Soon, they were all waving their torches about. The leeches hissed and shriveled. Teegan found one in her hair, pulled it free and held it to the fire. It shrank to half its original length and shattered with a quiet pop.
Ridding the tunnel of the leeches didn’t take long after that. And what was more, the guardians finished their work. With a final arrow from Silvana, the last attacking goblin died. In the calm that followed, one of the cadets passed her torch along the walls and ceiling, illuminating a thousand tiny boreholes. “Look at them all.”
Quinton snatched her torch away. “They’ve weakened the ice,” he said. “And so have you. Douse yer flames.”
Too late.
With a tremendous crack, the roof gave. Teegan felt herself yanked backward by her cloak. Dag knocked two others out of the way. Great blocks of ice fell into the passage, frozen dust choking the air.
When the quaking settled and the air cleared, they found a new passage had opened opposite the side tunnel where the first three goblins had appeared. And it was not empty. Light flickered at a bend not far away. Deep voices droned.
Paskin grit his teeth. “What now?”
“Cadets,” Master Jairun said, pushing his way to this new front of their battle. “Get behind us.”
But Teegan held her place. “Wait, sir. Let me listen. Give me quiet, please.”
To her surprise, the guardians obeyed, and from the new tunnel, she heard a voice she’d known her whole life. “These are not enemies.”
A troop of watchmen came marching around the bend, with a single torchbearer in the lead. Teegan ran to him, hardly able to believe her eyes. “Tehpa?”
Sireth Yar halted and smiled at his behlna before shifting his gaze to Master Jairun. “The watchmen companies are reporting for duty, Headmaster.” Then his smile faded. “What’s left of us, anyway.”
49
CONNOR
TANELETHAR
BEZIK HILLS
The maps in Faelin’s journal may not have been the living, Aropha variety Lee favored, but they proved valuable. He’d inked them in great detail. Connor had learned of his patehpa’s mapmaking skills when the cadets first entered Tanelethar the year before and found the sanctuary near Trader’s Knoll. Faelin’s work had guided their party to the shairosite needed to destroy the dragon’s portal and then to the portal itself.
Now Connor hoped his patehpa’s work might guide them to the Rapha Key. But evening had come, and as the light faded in the rolling terrain known as the Bezik Hills, so did their chances of finding the last location Faelin had marked in his quest.
“Is that it?” Lee pointed a sikari knife at the remnants of an ancient village. Nothing remained but odd-shaped mounds and crumbling rock walls among the drifting wisps. “Is that old Barihav?”
Connor held up the journal to compare the map to the landscape. “Possibly.”
“That must be the ruin,” Lee said, sheathing his knife. “Or this quest is over. If that isn’t old Barihav, then King Dacon’s magician-thief and his final resting place are lost for good.”
“Yes.” Connor turned the map sideways, then back again, cocking his head. “The more I look at it, the more I think you’re right.”
