Bear Knight, page 28
“Not my authority, but the Rescuer’s. His sovereignty. His righteousness. Your nights tarnishing his creation are over.”
Connor swung Revornosh, and the creature countered with its halberd. Lightraider steel met some alloy of pyranium and sent up green sparks. The impact scored a nick on the creature’s blade, but nothing more.
It laughed. “You stand no chance against the centuries of my existence. I roamed the land long before you. I’ll roam it long after you’re gone.”
“I don’t think so!” Kara had used the breathing space Connor bought her to speak the same prayer, so that her whirlknives shone like his sword. She slashed at the creature, forcing it to defend with both the scimitar and the halberd. To Connor’s astonishment, the knives cut deeper into the pyranium weapons than Revornosh.
He followed her attack by driving the spike of his crook into the creature’s ribcage. The green flames sparked and flared. The creature screamed. Kara stepped in with her knives crossed and slashed outward to scissor its neck. The blades passed through the ore spine, and the fire under the black bones went out.
The orc’s shrouded skeleton made a slow, reluctant fall through the gray forest vapors and settled into the brush.
Connor and Kara turned, ready for more fighting, but their friends and the bear had finished the rest.
Lee stood with mouth hanging, staring at the Aladoth they’d all fought to protect. Anger overcame the shock in his brow. “Shan?”
54
“It seems I found the wrong brother.”
Ioanu, the name Kara had used when she introduced the bear to Connor, watched with ears forward as Lee and Shan traded harsh words and sharp hand gestures at the edge of the clearing.
“Taller,” Tiran said, “older, with no spectacles or red paste in his hair. But otherwise, he could be Lee. Strange.”
Connor shot him a glance. “Strange? You do remember you’re a twin, right?”
“Not an identical one. And Lee has no twin. I didn’t even know he had a brehna.”
Kara tugged at Connor’s sleeve. “Whatever their relationship, we need to find out what this man knows about Keir and move on. We cannot linger here after the noise of the battle. Your . . . airship may be seen as well.”
Connor nodded and started toward the arguing pair, but made it only two paces before he felt her grip on his arm. She pushed close and lowered her voice. “I heard you. When I was fighting the wraith, that shrouded orc we killed, I heard your call. You commanded it to get away from me.”
“I didn’t mean to imply you couldn’t defend yourself.”
Kara pulled her head back a bit and narrowed her indigo eyes at him. “I never said I was offended.” She gave him a quick smile. “I’m glad you came.”
He let out a quiet laugh, about to speak, when he sensed someone else had joined the conversation. The two turned to find Ioanu right behind them. She wasn’t sneaking, not that Connor could tell. But the way her mass moved in the ground fog made no sound.
Ioanu gazed back at them, looking from one to the other, then sniffed in Connor’s direction. “Huh. Interesting.”
Connor suddenly felt as if he should check the scent of his tunic. “What’s interesting?”
“Nothing,” the bear said. “Sorry to intrude.”
The argument between Lee and Shan had settled to a quiet simmer by the time Connor approached. “Are you ready to introduce us?” he asked Lee.
“This is Lee Shan, my brother, who took the ships.” The manner of his introduction earned a frown from Shan, but Lee ignored it. “He was kept by barkhides and orcs in a camp in this forest with many others. The prisoners are being tortured and terrorized—”
“To make us ready to slaughter the Keledan,” Shan said, interrupting him.
Connor had suspected as much, but he needed to be sure. “Are you certain?”
“Oh yes. I am certain.” The darkness in Shan’s gaze sent chills through him. What horrors had this man suffered?
Kara, still hanging back, lifted her chin. “How did you come to have Keir’s blood all over your clothes—so much that my bear friend tracked you instead of him?”
Shan looked down and lifted the hem of his tunic. “This is your brother’s blood?” He laughed. “He was as my brother too, though the terror of our prison stripped him of his name. I know him as Hosal. We escaped together. The orcs wounded him with many cuts during their torture, but then I helped him out of the camp.”
Kara’s hand went to her sword and twitched. “If you helped him, where is he now?”
“We were separated by dragon fire. Lord Valshadox attacked. But he aimed at me, not Hosa—not Keir, I mean.” Shan showed her charred fabric at his shoulder and a burn underneath. “I ducked behind a boulder in time to escape most of the blast. The dragon flew on, attacking other prisoners, not your brother.” He nodded toward the thickening forest to the east. “We set a meeting point, a tower to the southeast. I was on my way there when the wraith and his creatures found me.”
“Show us the way.”
“Wait,” Connor said to Kara, lowering his voice a touch. “We were beset by a pack of goblins in the Bezik hills, also to the southeast. They knew about you and Tiran. We questioned one, and it said you were walking into a trap.”
Behind him, Tiran sighed. “We’ve always been walking into a trap. That was the point of letting the dragon send Kara visions of her tortured brehna.”
“I know. Master Jairun told me. But there’s something more. The goblin said Valshadox has plans within plans. The dragon may have steered Shan and Keir. Herded them. Allowed them to escape.”
Shan began to protest, but Lee held up a hand. “This meeting point of yours. Is it a landmark, easy to spot within this forest of darkness?”
“Yes. It is, but you cannot think—”
“Connor’s right. The dragon has set some plot in motion to capture Keir.”
“Keir and I both,” Kara said. “Or all of us. What a boon for a dragon to hold a pack of lightraiders in its clutches, even cadets. We must find my brehna before he reaches this landmark and change his course. Can we use the airship?”
Connor shook his head. “The Starling is low on fuel, and I doubt it can handle Ioanu.”
“Then Lee should use it to get his brehna out of here. He’s endured enough. The rest of us will go on foot.”
Lee began to argue, but Connor pulled him aside. “Kara’s right. You and Zel take Shan and head for Emen Kar. Seek the key. Talk to Shan on the way. He may have left Keledev years ago, but I believe you can still rescue him—an answer to your mehma’s prayers. We’ll find Keir and meet you at the ruin. And then we’ll all go home to celebrate two brehnan saved instead of one.”
55
TEEGAN
KELEDEV
UNDER PELLION’S FLOW
The last chamber outside the goblin den was quiet when the party arrived, much as Teegan and Dag had found it before the iceblade attacked. “Careful,” she said. “This may be another ambush.” She stretched out her trident toward the opening in the opposite wall. “The entrance to the main den is over there.”
The party advanced slowly and in silence—watching and ready—until they passed the middle of the chamber. There were no grunts, breathing, or shifting from the enemy—only the steady drip, drip of ice melt.
Dag, near the front with Master Jairun, let his twin axes rest. “I suppose they’ve truly all gone out to the flow.”
“Gaah!” Goblins camouflaged in grit and brandishing ice knives and scimitars jumped out from the chamber walls.
“Hold fast!” Master Jairun shouted. “Keep them on the rim!”
Called by his command, Pedrig, who’d hung back in the previous passage, appeared behind them in full armor. His set his claws in the stone floor, silver fur rising to a ridge on his back, and unleashed his terrible bark. The undulating pine-green sphere, which Teegan had seen bounce over goblins in the straight crevice the day before, rolled around the edge of the chamber like a child’s ball in a pail.
The goblins, held in place by the guardians, melted one by one into boiling lichen as the sphere passed over them.
Dag looked back at Teegan and grinned. “Looks like our plan wor—”
A screech interrupted him. More goblins rose from the floor among the party, camouflaged in the same way as their comrades. One wrapped a clawed hand around Paskin’s throat and plunged an ice knife into his body. Paskin screamed.
Dag crossed the chamber in a single stride and grabbed the goblin by its pale shoulders. He ripped the creature away from the younger cadet and threw it against the wall, cracking its brittleknit skull.
Others finished two more off in short order, and Teegan rushed to catch Paskin as he fell.
He gazed up at her, eyes wide. “It’s cold, so cold it burns!”
She pulled his cloak aside and cut away a bloody patch of his tunic to find the wound. “It’s your shoulder. If we can stop the bleeding, you’ll stay with us in this life. I promise.” Even as she said it, Teegan knew she was breaking a rule Master Jairun had taught them in their renewer classes—never make a promise you’re not sure you can keep. She chewed a wad of black tea leaves from her manykit and stuffed them into the wound. “This will slow the bleeding. But the infection needs prayer.”
Paskin nodded, and though she could see that even breathing pained him, he spoke the words to the Rescuer with her—the same prayer Pedrig had taught Teegan when the goblin ice scratched her during the scouting expedition.
The lichen growing in the wound receded. Teegan began wrapping it with a dressing. “Yes. You’ll be all right. I’m sure of it.”
Together, Dag and Teegan carried Paskin as the party ventured into the main goblin den. It was a risk, but to escort the wounded back through the tunnels now seemed a greater one. Paskin’s safest path now was forward.
Dag walked in a low stoop to match Paskin’s height. “I’m grateful for your father’s advice, Teegan. Without his knowledge of that goblin tactic—hiding in the walls—we might have taken greater casualties than this. Thanks to him, we were prepared.”
“We were,” she said. “I hope he’s prepared his watchmen just as well.”
According to Teegan’s tehpa, the companies had taken many losses in their trek north through the tunnels. Half the strength of Thousand Falls and the Windhold had come from the west. The same portion of Ravencrest and Orvyn’s Vow had marched from the east through another set of tunnels they’d found. Both groups had suffered casualties in the fighting on the way, and they’d taken more after meeting up where the tunnels joined south of Pellion’s Flow.
The watchmaster of Thousand Falls, struck down but not killed during a brutal attack at the intersection of six passages, had passed command of the full contingent to Sireth. Together, he and Master Jairun had concocted a new plan to defeat the dark creature army. Teegan had overheard only a little.
“Your losses show me your contingent lacks confidence in their Keledan armor,” Master Jairun had said to her tehpa. “Speak to them. Lead them. Remind them the armor is as much a weapon as it is a defense—a lesson vital to our success.”
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The party encountered a few stragglers in the main goblin den and wiped them out in short order.
The den looked like a natural cavern, with smooth, toothy formations hanging from the ceiling and pockets of age-old ice in every corner. The party lit their torches and split to scour every nook and alcove to be sure no other attacks would come.
During the search, Teegan stayed with Paskin on a shelf in the north wall, where a sloping passage looked to be an exit to the surface. While she waited, she fitted him with a new air bladder from the extra stores Dag had brought. The warm air it supplied did little to aid his labored breaths. She glanced up at Master Jairun as he and the others came together again on the shelf. “He’s feverish, and his breathing is thin. Should we leave him down here? Won’t he be safer far from the battle?”
Master Jairun shook his head. “None of us are safe down here, and that will be doubly true within the hour. Best to get him out of this dark and up into the light of the moons and stars.”
As the headmaster finished this reply, Quinton returned and directed his torch at the northwest corner of the cavern. “Over there, we found a tunnel leadin’ downward. If we follow it, we may learn how they breached the barrier.”
“Later,” Master Jairun said. “Right now, we must deal with the dark army up there on the ice flow.” He ducked to enter the passage to the surface. “Our watchmen are waiting. We must act now, lest they become impatient and spoil the plan.”
Teegan bristled at the idea her tehpa’s men might spoil anything, but as she and Dag helped Paskin up, she realized the headmaster was not wrong. Her tehpa, a hunter from the coastal forest of Sil Tymest, was now leading two hundred or more men and women of the foothill companies. They’d suffered casualties. With fear and rage pushing through their ranks, how long could he keep them under control?
AARON
SOUTH OF PELLION’S FLOW
“Who are we?” Sireth shouted, raising the watchmaster’s oversize war hammer high.
Aaron answered him with the others in the strongest voice he could muster. “We are the watchmen!”
“Who are we?
“We are the wall!”
The rocks south of the ice flow echoed with the chorus of the watchmen. Upslope, the creatures—many carrying frost-green torches and some with the same frost-green glow in their eyes and joints—shifted about. Restless.
They weren’t the only ones.
“When will we show ourselves?” Aaron asked, tugging at the dressing where he’d burned one of the black worms away from his neck. “When will we avenge our comrades?”
“At the signal, lad. Not before. And the vengeance will be the High One’s, not ours. We will shine with his armor, and he will do the rest.”
“His armor.” Aaron looked down at his hands and arms, as if expecting to see more than wool and leather. “What if I have no armor?”
“In truth, I might have asked the same not long ago. But my behlna and sehna and their friends at Ras Telesar showed me the way. The armor is a gift for all Keledan. We all carry it.”
“How will I call it up when the creatures come at us?”
“By leaning on him, lad. By knowing his word is true and resting on his promises.”
Aaron had heard similar words too often in his village chapel without a deeper explanation.
Sireth seemed to sense this and took him by the shoulders. “Shout your belief here.” He laid a hand upon Aaron’s chest, over his heart. “Shout that his word is true. And neither man nor creature, neither height nor depth, neither sword nor ice will separate you from his love and gift.” Sireth released him. “When the goblins come at us, lean on that with all your being.”
Aaron nodded, calmer now. But if he’d been struggling, perhaps so had others. “I think the rest need to hear the same.”
Sireth gave him a grim smile and turned to a young woman he’d chosen as a lieutenant. “Pass the words I’ve spoken. Quietly. And remind them that no matter what happens, not one soul is to move until we see the fire. Make sure they understand.”
Once she’d started her work, Sireth thrust the watchmaster’s hammer high again. “Who are we?”
“We are the watchmen!”
“Who are we?”
“We are the wall!”
Upslope on the ice flow, the creatures squirmed.
Aaron gritted his teeth. “Come on, Master Jairun. Show us that fire.”
57
LEE
TANELETHAR
ABOVE SIL SHADATH
Lee sat on The Starling’s aft bench, watching Shan, who stood with elbows resting on the rail, looking out over the forest. Kara had come to Tanelethar in search of her brother, and the Havarra bear the Rescuer sent to aid her in this quest had found Lee’s brother instead. How strange and unfathomable was the High One’s design?
“I forgive you,” he said after a time.
Shan lifted his head and glanced over his shoulder. “I never asked for your forgiveness.”
“You have it all the same. All these years, I’ve harbored anger for what your leaving did to Mother and Father—what it did to me. But now that we’re together, the anger fades. I want you to come home. The Rescuer wants you to come home too.”
Shan turned and rested his back against the wicker. “Trang, you know I—”
“It’s Lee now, Brother.”
This earned him a flat look. “We are all Lee. Our whole family.”
“True, but that is what they called me in the Scribes, and I’ve grown accustomed to it. Even Father calls me Lee now.”
“Oh. Well. If Father permits it.” Shan rolled his eyes.
“Don’t speak of him with disrespect. It broke his heart when you left. He loves you.”
“Strange. I remember only the shouting.”
“Perhaps if you hadn’t bucked against his every word—challenged him at every turn because of your lack of . . .” Lee stopped and sighed. He was growing harsh, and he didn’t want to.
But the damage was done. He felt heat in Shan’s reply. “My lack of what, Brother?
“Your lack of faith.” Lee lowered his gaze to the talanium ring, larger than the ringlets he’d earned in the Five Quests, and turned it about his finger. He expected a rebuke but received none, and when he lifted his gaze again, he found Shan waiting, expectant.
“Go on.” The words were a plea rather than a dare. “Convince me of the faith I’ve forgotten.”
Was this the moment Lee’s mother had prayed for? “You know the Scrolls as well as I. In our youth, you helped me learn them. No knowledge I can share will help you unless you acknowledge their authority—the High One’s authority.”
“I don’t know that I can.”
