Angelslayer: The Winnowing War (83 page)

K
rysis was awakened by a sudden crash that echoed through the hallway. She sat up with a start, frightened. Suddenly she understood why Eryian had not wanted to dream, for her own dreams still swam, shadowed and cold. She was so cold she was shivering. Then she realized it was not without reason; she could see her breath as a mist, even though the embers of the hearth fire were still glowing. At first she wondered if it were still a dream, for the light of the fire seemed unable to clear its hearth. Something was coming, closing in on them.

She found Eryian asleep beside her. He looked as though he had fallen unconscious, and she remembered his long hours of tossing, moaning. She could also remember the name he spoke.
Cassium.
He had spoken it with such pain it startled her. She knew that among the legendary lords of the Daath, in the days of the beginning after the angel wars, there had once lived a queen named Cassium—that she had learned from an angel the star knowledge, a Star Walker Queen. She wondered if Cassium was perhaps someone he had known when he was younger, someone from his past, but for some odd reason, perhaps the way he had spoken it, she believed he knew her. He knew the Star Walker Queen herself. Yet he had never spoken her name before.

Krysis carefully slipped from the bed, leaving the white bearskin to cover Eryian. The room was pocketed in uneasy shadow. She started for the window, and then paused, hearing a low, guttural moan.

Krysis backed away slowly, then caught movement—not from the door, but from the window. When she turned, a figure stood in the room with her, his skin painted, the flesh edged in ridges. His head was shaven and his face was ritually scarred down one side, the right eye melted away, the skin about it dark and mottled.

“You can tell your warlord his time is marked,” the priest hissed, then pointed a long, curled, yellowed nail. “As is yours.”

Krysis gasped, backing away. She started to turn for the door. If she opened them, four of Eryian's guards were on the other side, but as she moved for it, a chest soundlessly moved to block the path.

“No need to scream,” the priest added. “They cannot hear you.”

Krysis turned, backed against the chest. “Who are you?”

“I am the herald of the Salamander. He wanted to send greeting—to you actually—the mortal woman of the star jumper.”

She glanced to Eryian, who hadn't moved, his head still to the side. When she turned, the priest was suddenly in her face. His tongue flicked across her lips. She cried out, shoving him back, but found he was strong, weighted heavy in muscle.

“Seeing you,” he whispered, “I amd disappointed to be only the herald.”

His hand shot beneath her tunic to seize the inside of her thigh. She tried to scream, but he had drawn fingers over her mouth and with the movement had stolen her voice.

His breath stank, an acid, bitter smell, and she saw between his teeth, which were filed to points, bits of tissue as though he had been shredding raw meat.

He forced her back, bending her across the chest, and his hand now slid up her thigh. She swiped at the side of his face that was still human, leaving cuts from her nails, but the priest only smiled. He was holding her against the chest with one hand and his fingers curled about her bodice, but before he could tear it, a hand curled from behind about his face. Krysis briefly saw panic in his single eye. The hand tightened, then jerked. She heard the neck snap. But Eryian had not broken it; he had turned the priest about and now held him by the face, studying him.

“If you have a message,” Eryian said, “you can give it to me.”

“I will save that for when you have joined us, warlord.”

Eryian studied him only a moment longer, then withdrew his hand and quickly brought it in a snap that cracked the priest's windpipe. As the priest staggered, Eryian turned and withdrew a sword from a wall mount. He walked toward the priest almost calmly, then grabbed him by the shoulder and spun him around, shoved his face against the wall. Eryian now leaned close to his ear.

“I don't know if your master can hear me, but if he is listening, he should know that if he touches her again, and I will come for his flesh.”

Krysis then screeched, turning away when Eryian shoved the sword into the priest's buttocks, upward, piercing through to pin the body face forward against the wall. The priest thrashed for a moment, arms flailing.

With the noise, the doors were forced open from behind, the chest shoved aside. Two of Eryian's men stepped into the room, weapons drawn.

Eryian stepped back, then turned to Krysis. He touched her cheek.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

She nodded, drawing a hand over her mouth against the foul taste of the priest's tongue.

Eryian glanced past her to one of the guards. “Bring my armor; prepare a mount for me.”

The guard nodded and both left, closing the doors behind them. “I'll have you taken somewhere safe,” Eryian said as he pulled on a leather tunic. “I'll leave you with heavy guard—they will not get to you again.” “You are not leaving …” “I must. They are close.”

“But Eryian … you almost died. You need more rest.” “No time. Once they cross the river, there is nothing to stop them from reaching even Terith-Aire. Where is Little Eryian?” “At home. I have left him well protected.”

“I will send a maniple of my personal guard. It is time the Daath began to gather their children.” “For what?”

“Escape. If one Angelslayer survives, the demon will have failed—he comes with numbers uncounted, he comes sure of his path, but he will trip, he will fall. I cannot say how, but I feel it in my blood.” Eryian latched his belt, then paused, seeing her eyes tear.

“Demon? This is Endgame. Is it now, Eryian? That which you sometimes have spoken of?” she asked.

He nodded. He reached forward to pull her into a tight embrace and a moment he held her, then turned, lifting his cloak from a peg.

“Who … who is Cassium?”

Eryian paused, turned, but didn't answer at first.

“You spoke her name.”

“Someone I knew, Krysis. Once.”

“Before me?”

“Before you—before memory's veil.” He stepped forward and touched her cheek. “In this flesh, there was no one but you.” He leaned to kiss her lips. “Take care, my love.”

“Will I see you again?”

He stared at her, his deep, ice eyes misted. He tightened his jaw, then lifted his hand to take hers, spreading her fingers in the sign of the word. He then turned and threw open the door.

Alone, the darkness of the room seemed to close on her and Krysis broke into a sob.

Tillantus rode at the head of the first legion of Argolis's Shadow Warriors, the King's Guard, the Daath's prime. They spread out along the plains of Ishmia as they marched, slow and heavy. Behind them came the two legions of the Daath, the finest, deadliest warriors in all the Earth. They were arrayed in full armor, and the centuries of white horses rode at the fore, with broad, smoked cloaks.

The aged first captain, Tillantus, was still broad-shouldered and firm in the saddle. He studied the sky as he rode. It was a hard gray, with a cold, south wind. Most of the men wore thick, silver-white fur about their necks and shoulders.

The Daath had always taken breath on attack; there seemed almost a poetry of death in white steel. This time, however, Tillantus felt a dread, a knot in his gut. The air seemed unnaturally cruel.

The captain suddenly drew up his reins, lifting his sword high. His commanders called halt. They were spread out along the western ridge of Ishmia; the smell of the sea was strong in the air. Tillantus watched a long figure on a roan horse riding toward them. The figure turned out along the shore, then came at full gallop up the grassy edge of the ridge near the river.

Once he reached the head of his armies, Eryian rose in the stirrups, drawing his sword and lifting it high, rearing the mount. When he cried out to them, they answered, and a deafening roar, a cry of thousands as the legions of the Daath, the conquerors of the seven valleys, lifted their weapons in greeting to their warlord, the Eagle.

L
och watched the island carefully as they approached. It was first a far line upon the waters, a dark shadow. It was near dusk. The ship they traveled in was a long, sleek Etlantian warship, dark in the waters. But there was no crew, only Sandalaphon, his hand on the tilling oar. The ship's oars were laid back, and it moved with unseen wind against a sail that glistened a gossamer mesh. The warship cut the sea so quickly, the island seemed to have the illusion it was growing as they approached.

Beside him, Hyacinth watched, standing near the hull work, gripping the edge.

“I wish to stop here, at this island,” Loch said quietly to Sandalaphon. Sandalaphon stared back, almost as though he hadn't heard, but suddenly they had stopped. The keel rested against white sand. The horizon was a rust stain, and shadows were long, but the air was warm and windless. Loch studied the trees as birds called to him from the thick of a rainforest nestled in dark green and mist.

Loch turned to stare at Hyacinth. She was surprised at how different he looked. The face seemed sharper, thinner, the eyes darker. He looked to have aged years. He held out his hand and helped her over the gunwale.

The sea was warm, and waves curled low and lazy against the sand as he led her up the beach. Hyacinth wondered why he had done it, why he had brought her back. The touch of his sword had whispered to her from death's shadow and at first she didn't turn. She hadn't wanted to come back. The rest of them were dying all around; she could feel their lives wink out—Storan, Danwyar, and soon, she guessed, Darke, as well. But through the light of Loch's aganon blade she had seen his eyes, and though she wasn't certain he would ever love her, truly love her, she knew at least that he would need her and that his need was too strong to turn away.

There was a green hue to the island forest mist. The ground was wet in moss. They stepped through the warm waters of a stream, and on the other side, Loch paused beneath the wide, thick canopy of a cedar. Loch cupped her chin. He took her hand and slowly knelt, urging her to kneel beside him. He watched her carefully.

“Sandalaphon,” he said quietly.

She was startled to realize the giant was just behind her. “My lord,” he answered.

“Cleanse her—then bind us. Do it now; speak the covenant.”

Hyacinth gasped. She watched Loch, frightened. The giant's sunblade—the same severe crystal as Loch's, cleared its sheath and the dark of the forest bled with quiet, blue light. The crystal blade first touched Loch's right shoulder, then lifted and touched her left. She felt a quick pulse down her arm, though it did not burn as the touch of the blade had burned before. With the light came a knowing, a different knowing than any of her magicks, any of her spells, like nothing she had ever felt, and for a moment it took her breath. For a sliver of time she could see the stars open. She could see suns beyond the sun, and she felt a brush of power unlike anything she had ever tasted. As the sword lifted from her shoulder, it faded, but the taste of it remained, and Hyacinth knew that all she had just seen could be found again, for though the sting of power had faded its pathway remained. She turned, but the giant was gone; they were alone. She looked back to Loch.

“What just happened?” she asked.

“I have made you a queen.”

“Why do that? Why?”

“They will need you.”

“Who? Your Daath? They do not need me, Loch. You make an error; I am only a sorcereress, a spell binder. I have no light to give them. Or you.”

He shook his head. “It is not the Daath I speak of.”

“Then who, Loch?”

“Your son and those he will save.”

She shivered.

“My son?”

He nodded.

“And what of you? You have bound me to you, made me queen—what do you feel for me, Loch?”

“Sadness, thirst—love. Someone once told me love did not exist. They were wrong.”

His hand had been resting on the hilt of the Angelslayer. He lifted the sword slowly and held its flange near his opened palm. Though his skin was unbroken, from the pores, a thin vapor of blood moved along his wrist, and then, with a shiver of quick, blue light, it was swallowed into the purple pommel of the sword's hilt and spilled red and rich into the crystal of the blade.

“I am dying, Hyacinth. With each taste the sword takes, I age, I lose more life.”

She shook her head. “No. Tell your protector to heal you.” “There is nothing Sandalaphon can do.”

“Then throw the damned sword into the ocean! You have done what they asked of you! You have done all your powerful Elyon could ever want.”

“No. He wants more, my heart. I am to sacrifice it, and I have little time left.” “Loch, you can stop this, turn it!”