Thornbear (Book 1) (41 page)

Seconds ticked by with glacial slowness, until finally he heard the tell-tale sound of chitinous legs on stone. The beast was coming closer. He didn’t turn his head to look, fearing that any sign of consciousness might make the arachnid rethink his approach.

A shadow fell over him and he saw a thick black leg appear next to his face.
No, not that close. Stand over there!
The damned spider was directly above him now.

His head was facing the correct direction to see Matthew stand, some hundred yards distant, holding his arms wide and moving his lips. Something dark appeared between his outstretched hands and it began to slowly turn in the air.

The spider laughed. “Foolish wizard! Do you think to strike me with such a slow and clumsy attack?” His legs bent, as he prepared to leap away.

Gram reached across his body, taking Thorn into his left hand and sweeping it across in a wide stroke, clipping the ends from two of Chel’strathek’s legs. The arachnid stumbled and then Matthew released his attack.

Four black triangles, connected at one central point and spanning a space of four or five feet, flew through the air parallel to the ground. It was spinning as it came and when it reached Chel’strathek, it passed through the dark god’s body as though it were nothing more than illusion.

With a strange detachment Gram noted that it passed partly through the bush that stood between them and where the black triangles went, wood and leaves simply vanished.

As the strange triangle blades emerged from the other side of the arachnid’s main body, it shivered and then erupted. The air went white and a giant hand crushed Gram’s body into the ground.

Chapter 37

“Wake up,” said an insistent and increasingly irritating voice. Gram ignored it.
I’m dead, go away.

“You have to wake up,” it said again, and then something pushed against his shoulder. Sharp pains lanced through Gram’s body. He began to rethink his ‘dead’ hypothesis. Being dead wasn’t supposed to hurt so much.

Another rough jolt made his mind up for him. “Goddammit, stop!” he hissed.

“You’re alive!” It was Matthew’s voice.

“Not for long if you keep beating on me like that,” Gram complained. He paused briefly and then asked, “How bad is it?”

“I can’t tell. You need to dismiss the armor so I can see your body.”

“I thought you had magic eyes.”

“Magesight won’t penetrate this armor. If it could, you’d have died from the first one of those blasts,” said Matthew.

“That would be some pretty shitty armor then,” agreed Gram.

“Thanks for the compliment,” said Matthew dryly.

“How do I dismiss it?”

“It’s the same command word.”

Gram started to comply but then a thought occurred to him. “It might be better if I leave it on.”

“Why?” asked the young wizard.

“It might be the only thing holding me together.”

“If it was that bad you’d be dead already, but you could be bleeding in there. I need to see you so I can make sure you don’t die.”

“You’re always a ray of sunshine, aren’t you?” noted Gram. Doing as he had been told, he dismissed the armor. He was rewarded with a worried intake of breath when Matthew saw him.

“Oooh damn!” said his friend.

“I’ll dismiss the sword too, hold on,” said Gram.

“No! Don’t!”

“Why not?”

“I think it’s keeping you alive,” said Matthew, a sound of wonder in his voice.

“What?!” Gram struggled to lift his head.

“Don’t move!”

“Why?!” Gram was growing more panicked with each warning.

“Just shut up. It’s bad, really bad. If you move… oh gods! Just be still. Let me do what I can,” Matthew sounded close to panic himself.

“Can’t we wait for your sister? You didn’t do such a great job last time you worked on me,” observed Gram.

“We split up before I found you. She’s taking Irene and Grace back to Cameron. You don’t have that much time,” said Matthew. “You’ll have to settle for me.”

“Fuck.”

“Don’t worry. I did some practicing after last time. Moira told Dad and he wasn’t too pleased. He wanted to make sure I would be better prepared in the future.” Matthew’s voice was calm now.

“If you had made armor that didn’t fly apart every time something hit it then this wouldn’t
be
the next time,” argued Gram.

“It doesn’t, Gram,” said Matthew. “That armor only does that when something catastrophically powerful hits it. From what Dad told me once, Karenth hit Dorian with one of those purple bolts and it destroyed his armor completely. You got hit
twice,
and then again twice more by those broad cone attacks—and you still have armor.”

Gram didn’t say anything; he was torn between irritation and the logic that told him he should be grateful. Silence was his best compromise.

“Well?” asked Matthew.

“Well what?”

“You still haven’t told me how cool you think the armor is…”

“Really?!” growled Gram. “Couldn’t this wait? Don’t you have something more important to do right now?”

“I figured I should get your feedback now, in case…” Matthew’s sentence trailed off.

“In case what?! I die?” Gram said, raising his voice. He wanted to shout but his lungs didn’t seem to have the strength for it. “Honestly, Matt, you’re unbelievable. I’m dying and you want to know if I liked the shiny armor.”

“There,” said Matthew, letting out a long sigh and beginning to laugh.

Gram stared at him in dismay.

“You should see your face,” said Matthew.

“This isn’t funny, Matt. I’m dying.”

“Not anymore,” said his friend.

“Huh?”

“I’m done with the worst of it,” said Matthew. “The large vein in your left leg was torn. I’ve fixed that and fused the bone back together, but the scariest part was the piece of rib that had lodged in your heart.”

“I didn’t feel anything. When did you start?”
Did he say my rib went through my heart?

“I started as soon as you removed the armor,” replied his friend. “That’s why your body is numb. Dad made me memorize all the major nerves.”

Gram took a moment to process that, noting with some surprise that his body was indeed numb.
How did I not notice that? Was that why he kept talking? To distract me?

“If a rib went into my heart I’d have died before you got here,” said Gram blankly.

“That’s why I told you not to dismiss the sword. There was a line of power running from the ruby stone to your heart and lungs. Somehow it kept the blood flowing and your lungs working until I could fix it.” Matthew was staring down at him with red eyes.

“Are you going to cry?” Gram asked in alarm. Matthew wasn’t known for emotional displays.

“No,” said his friend, wiping at his face. “Shut up. You’re my best friend. I thought you were dying.”

Gram mumbled something unintelligible. His throat was thick and made it difficult to speak.

“What?” asked Matthew.

He swallowed and tried again, “I said, ‘the armor is really cool’.”

Matthew laughed, “Yeah, it is, isn’t it? Your plan to lure Chel’strathek over here by letting him blast you at close range was pretty cool too.”

“Now you’re just being a smartass.”

“Yeah,” said his friend with a smile. “I am. That was the stupidest thing I think I’ve ever seen.”

Gram wanted to laugh too, but his body wasn’t quite up for it. “Can I sit up now?”

“Not yet. Your right arm is still dislocated and you have torn muscles in several places. Let me fix those and then maybe I’ll let you have the use of your body again.”

***

Matthew called his dragon, Desacus, back and healed his leg before they mounted to leave. Gram looked at him skeptically.

“The two of us will be too much for him,” he said. The dragon didn’t look capable of carrying more than one rider.

Matthew put a hand on his shoulder, “I’ll make us lighter, don’t worry.”

“Every time you say ‘don’t worry’ I later decide that I should have worried,” said Gram.

“You sound like an old woman.”

There’s a reason old women live to be old,
thought Gram, but he refrained from arguing further. Soon they were winging their way back toward Cameron Castle.

“You said Moira was with Grace and Irene…”

“When Dad got Elaine’s message, he left immediately. Moira and I brought the others back in the flying machine, but it took us longer. Once we reached the castle we had nothing to do, and Dad hadn’t come back, so we took matters into our own hands.”

“I didn’t know he had given you the dragons,” said Gram.

Matthew smiled. “He hadn’t. But he had shown them to us. He was planning to wait until we were much older.”

“Then how?”

“We broke in,” said his friend. “Mom was attuned for the door to the egg chamber and I already knew the key to the stasis lock.”

Gram just shook his head.

“After that, we took the dragons and flew to the house, but there was no one there and the house itself was nothing but charred timbers. We split up and began searching. Moira found Grace and sent me a message, so I headed for the same area, but instead of them I found you. Mom is probably still searching, since she couldn’t hear Moira’s message.” He tapped his temple.

“The night before this,” said Gram, “I saw your father fighting Celior.”

“Then maybe he’s already back at the castle,” said Matthew.

“I don’t think he won.”

“Dad wouldn’t lose,” said the young wizard. “He’s beaten far worse.”

“Celior was waiting for him. I think he caught him by surprise.”

“He wouldn’t lose, Gram.”

“But…”

“Just shut up,” said Matthew. “He’ll be there when we get back.”

I hope so,
thought Gram.

***

When they arrived at Cameron, many hours later, they found that neither the Count nor the Countess was there. Moira had returned with Grace and Irene and was waiting worriedly for them.

Gram’s family was glad to see him.

Rose’s hand covered her mouth when she saw what he looked like.

Carissa was more direct, “What happened to you?!” She ran to him, flinging her arms around him and sending shocks of pain through him from his recently abused ribs.

“Easy,” he answered, patting her head. “I got pretty banged up.”

His mother touched his face gingerly, “You have no idea how worried we’ve been.” She glanced at Carissa, “Go fetch your grandmother, quickly.”

They fussed over him, and put him to bed almost immediately. Moira came and double checked her brother’s handiwork, but she found little to complain about. Elise Thornbear brewed him a foul tasting tea, ‘to ease the swelling’ she had said.

Gram accepted their efforts without complaint, though he almost gagged drinking his grandmother’s foul concoction. Soon after that, he fell asleep.

Chapter 38

Gram slept a long time, but his rest wasn’t easy. His dreams were haunted by the events of the past week. He saw again the faces of the men he had slain and when he managed to escape those memories, Alyssa came to haunt him, dying repeatedly in his arms. It was almost a relief when he finally awoke.

“How long have I been in bed?” he asked his grandmother. She sat on a soft chair, close at hand.

“All last night and most of today,” she replied. “The sun is going back down now.”

He was surprised. He had thought perhaps it was morning. “Has the Count returned?”

“The Countess came back late last night. She left again this morning, to search for him again, but he has not been back,” said Elise.

“But you think he will be back?” he asked hopefully.

Elise sighed, taking a cloth from a washbasin she approached the bed. “Since you’re awake you can help.” She handed him the wet rag.

He looked at her curiously.

“Use it to clean yourself up. I doubt you want your old grandmother doing it.”

Looking beneath the sheet he could tell that someone had already cleaned most of the blood off. He was glad he hadn’t been awake for that. “He will be back, right?” he repeated.

“I’m an old woman, Gram,” said Elise. “I’ve sat beside many sickbeds and waited through a hundred long nights, waiting and hoping. Later, when you’re up and around, they’ll talk and make optimistic predictions, but I’ve given up such things.”

“But…”

“Mordecai has cheated death many times over,” she continued. “He might return, but I won’t hold out hope for it. I’m grateful enough for what fate has already returned to me.”

“What’s that?”

“My grandson,” she said simply.

They didn’t talk for a while after that. Gram sat up and Elise let him dress himself, but only in loose trousers and a soft tunic. His body was bruised and swollen from head to toe. His mother came in a short while later.

She studied him with a serious gaze before speaking, “I cannot begin to tell you how proud I am.”

Those hadn’t been the words he expected. “Momma I…”

“Shhh,” she said, hushing him. “Let me talk for a bit. Grace has been talking while you slept. She repeated much of what you already told us, though she had a decidedly different point of view.”

Gram grew worried. He could only imagine what Grace might have said.

“Matthew told me about your fight with Chel’strathek, and Irene told me even more. Especially concerning Alyssa and your fight with her master,” said Rose.

He nodded.

“They’re calling you a hero in the great hall,” she added, “but you mustn’t let such things go to your head.”

“Yes, Mother.”

“Let me see it.”

“See what?”

“The sword,” she said simply.

“Ah…” he answered uncertainly, realizing that Matthew had probably had to relay that part while telling his own story.

“I’m not angry, Gram,” said his mother. “I’m well past that, and I’ve given you the sword, though I now know you had already taken it. Let me see it with my own eyes.”

Gram stood and uttered the command that would summon Thorn, calling it out in its broken form.

“Show me the rest,” she said.