Nighteye’s brow furrowed beneath the brim of his hood as he stared down at me with what must’ve been a stern expression. “You really have to stop making a habit of this,” he said, the moment he saw I’d awoken and was watching him, my head on its side, “you have absolutely no idea how exasperating it is to have to see to the same patient more than once in the same battle – a few months off, sure, maybe you forget what it’s like to nearly die – but fifteen minutes? Smouldervein’s dead, and if Leafcloak hadn’t caught you –“
“Nighteye, that’s quite enough,” came another voice from my other side, matronly, warm.
“I’m sorry, Leafcloak, I was just about to get to the fact that he –“
“I’ll take over here.”
There was a shuffling sound as someone crossed the pavilion, heading towards Nighteye: Leafcloak marched into view.
She was white-haired – the kind that came with age – and masked with what looked like oak-tree leaves in different states of decay, arranged to cover most of her face. Her mouth and chin were clear, but other than that the mask left only the slits for her to see through. Her frame was plump and short, her chest on the overly-heavy side, all fastened tightly into a clingy green robe. The robe itself had clearly been a luxury item once upon a time, its hue scintillating between different shades, like a strip of grass blowing in the breeze; but it was frayed at every hem at skirts and cuffs, patched and re-patched in various places with other (plainly lesser-quality) cloth.
She put a hand on Nighteye’s arm. “Go fix Osselor – he’ll need two new eyes, thank you.”
I shuddered. Shivered. Lying there with my head on its side, staring in the same direction, not wanting to turn to look at the man she was talking about.
Nighteye strode out of my line of sight, protesting in an endless stream of inflections under his breath as he went on his way.
“There is nothing medically wrong with you,” the old arch-druidess said once she’d seated herself on the empty bed next to me, “aside from a touch of exhaustion. I think you need the help of an enchanter or a minister, truth be told, rather than a child of the Earth.”
I righted my head, shut my eyes. I knew there was nothing medically wrong with me. They’d clearly reenergised me again – I felt fine, bodily.
“You fell. Twice, in the span of an hour. If I didn’t already know better – it was you chasing that thing through my legs, wasn’t it? – I’d say you needed more practice.”
I could feel the weight of her leaf-framed gaze even with my eyes closed.
“So instead I’m saying you need help. You –”
“Where is Em?” I asked. My voice sounded level enough to my ears.
“You mean Emrelet Reyd.” I could hear the smile on her lips. “You seem to spend a lot of time with that magister, don’t you, young man?”
I opened my eyes, turned to look at her. “I’m committed to becoming a champion. I’m not joining the Magisterium. I…” My eyes went to the bedding, tracing the faint lines on the fine white linens. “She can help me fly.”
“But you’re quite capable of flying yourself, aren’t you?” I opened my mouth to protest, but she raised a grimy finger to shush me. “Oh, I quite understand. I was young too, once. Just because I’m the oldest human champion in the city doesn’t mean I didn’t have a dalliance or two back in the day.”
You’re only oldest because you retired, more than once, I wanted to say.
Her smile was sympathetic. “She’s the one who can help you. I do follow.”
I couldn’t say it.
“Just… where is she?”
“She was getting up just as I brought you in -“
I sat, swung my legs over the edge of the bed, and started calling on my wings.
“Don’t make me tie you down.” Threats were incongruous with her mothering tone, and all the more terrifying for it. I almost froze. “I can and will, but don’t make me.”
“She’s right.”
Zel, you’re still here?
“You didn’t get very hurt, this time. Your robe and tunic are shredded across the back too, now, by the way.”
“Leafcloak, I’m truly grateful to you for saving my life. I failed.” This time it was her opening her mouth to interject and me holding up a finger. “I failed. I won’t fly up high again. I promise. But.” I drew in a shuddering breath. “Don’t make me defend myself. I can and will, but don’t you make me. I at least need to see it. You can’t just leave me here listening to the fake birds singing while I know what’s going on right there!” I jabbed my hand at the canvas wall at the front of the tent. “I won’t try to help, but I’ve got to understand…”
Damn it, what did they call it?
“The weave?”
“… the weave! I’ll never get a better chance to see it -“
“Don’t be silly!” she said with a snort, clapping both hands down onto her knees. “We’ll get you a tutor, when the moon’s full. I take it that Nighteye or Dustbringer…?”
I met her gaze, then sighed. “Nighteye told me.”
“Good, good. I’ll permit you into the porch to watch – no flying off, or I will force you to defend yourself.”
No sooner had the words left her lips, I was standing up. The pain was almost gone, just the odd sharp twist in my ankles remaining – but I kept my wings out as I walked towards the entrance just in case. As I went past Nighteye, where he bent over a magister’s maimed face, I murmured, “I’ll try not to exasperate you so badly in future, my friend. Thank you.”
Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.
He looked up and gave me a nod, but he was tapping his foot as though he were still annoyed, or nervous, or something.
Then I was out in the protected porch once more. I looked out over the iron-helmed skulls of the skeletal warriors, staring into the sky.
Due to Zel I could spot Em within seconds, lightning-lit, platinum hair tempest-swept.
There was a ring of wizards and sorcerers in the air, others under the effects of flight-spells too. The few magisters still in the fight must’ve been archmages. The lot of them were throwing everything they had at the shield-enclosed, living-metal behemoth. Frozen struts of iron were struck by explosive missiles, and the rubble at its feet coalesced into an army of earthen elementals which aided the waves of bound demons piling onto it. The summons had been set to climbing the massive demon’s lattice-like structure, tearing at its weak points with fingers of brick, warping its steely supports with infernal power.
And the barrier-weave still held – Dustbringer was there, soaring around as fast as his Nethermist-shrouded chariot would carry him, helping to fix the lines of force the very moment they were damaged.
The behemoth, for what it was worth, hadn’t given up. It tore through the earth elementals as if they were comprised of dust, and only the very hardiest of the sorcerers’ demons fared any better. Its thrashing blows came simultaneously against various edges of the shield-weave, and seemed to slow the lines’ rotations where it struck them so that they ended up crumpling, the forces folding up into a distorted mess that took the focus of multiple sorcerers to iron out.
Suddenly the skeletons in front of the pavilion, right before me, were engaged in combat. The back ranks were just yards away, occluding the front lines, but I could hear the undead soldiers clanking as they fell to pieces, too slow to respond as swift-moving hell-spawn came clawing and gnashing at them. I even heard the pops of explosions, the screeching of shredded bone.
There were fewer now standing than when I’d last been here, and I worried they might fail to outlast whatever was killing (re-killing) them. We didn’t want to have demons pushing directly against the powerful shield Dustbringer had put over the healing station, surely…
I had a suspicion I’d be able to reanimate the broken bones of the fallen, make them put themselves back together, but I didn’t want to exert my influence over them – largely because I didn’t want to get on Dustbringer’s bad side if I did manage to pull it off. It would mean wresting control of them from him…
I looked across at Leafcloak. “Are you going to help them, or can I go up ten feet just to take a look?” I inclined my head towards the skeletal warriors.
She met my eyes. “Ten feet only, young man. Any higher, I bring you back down to earth the hard way, and you’ll fight again when it’s night in the Twelve Heavens.”
I don’t think you can match my speed in your bird form, I thought as I ascended softly, using just the merest twitch of my lower wings.
“She could just turn right back into that massive wolf, though, and almost instantly she’d be tall enough to catch you between her teeth.”
Maybe.
I looked out at the front rank of the skeletons.
A thinfinaran was there, a host of chest-high, flat-horned fiends at his back. And as I reached the angle of elevation required for me to see him, he raised his empty white helm to me, crying out: “Zi nissel grel – khashal, ugrel abarax akkar!”
He didn’t exactly look happy to see me, and his voice had something of a desperate quality to it. He was trying to break out of the perimeter, after all, and knowing he’d ended up losing at the end of our last encounter couldn’t have exactly been filling him with confidence.
But it was him, definitely him. Still thinking the city was going to fall tonight.
“You’re still wrong!” I yelled back at him.
He’s been reborn already?
“He must have friends in high places.”
Low places.
“You know what I mean.”
I looked down at Leafcloak. “You’ve got a thinfinaran coming, the white-knight variety of demon. Summoner. You know the one?”
“The one with the gauntlets. Yes.”
It looked like she frowned, then she was a small hummingbird in less than the blink of an eye. She flapped up to my level, looking out on the tenth-rank foe.
“I’ll deal with this,” she said in an almost sing-song voice.
“Are you sure? I could just saunter over there – I’ve met him before, but this time I could properly bind him for a bit, and you –“
I tried to scrutinise her body-language as she suddenly circled back down to land again in the pavilion’s porch; even after she reverted to human form, saying nothing to me, it was impossible.
Perhaps she was consenting?
I looked out again over the melee, but the thinfinaran was nowhere to be seen. The tide of the battle had suddenly turned, the skeletons pouring over their prone enemies, their swords thrusting mindlessly into hell-flesh bodies.
They were on the ground – all of the demons, in the rubble. It took me a few moments to spot how they were being held down, pulled down, by meshes of roots and shoots that had seemingly sprung up out of nowhere.
I landed next to Leafcloak. “You’re not going to kill a thinfinaran with some plants you’ve just conjured out of nowhere! I –“
“Young man, do you think this is the first time I’ve stepped into the arena?” The aged arch-druid sounded amused. “I set those plants there under the ground before we even set up the tent. As though we druids would take no precautions of our own, and trust instead to the fortifications of sorcery! As –“
“But the thinfin-”
“As for the thinfinaran, you must understand –” Leafcloak approached the back-line of the skeletons, facing away from me – twists and snarls of roots came threading between the legs of the undead soldiers, carrying something through the ranks “– that I’ve been fighting them since before you were born.”
She retrieved whatever it was the roots had been carrying to her, then turned back to me, hefting the items up for me to see.
My jaw dropped suitably.
“They’re basically powerless without their gauntlets, and they can’t just make more on this plane.”
She tossed the two massive white-metal gloves to the ground between us, where they fell with a pair of tremendous, clattering thuds.
Even just hearing their weight, I had to wonder at the strength Leafcloak had in her plump, little-old-woman frame. I doubted I’d have been able to lift one glove with both hands, and suspected it’d take a muscle-bound man to do much better. Hefting both at once…
She was using archmagery, her fine control over her own musculature, to cheat. That was what the heretic druid in Firenight Square had been doing when she’d used her bare hand to rend stone.
Interesting.
I went back to watching the fight against the –
“Smikelliol. I’m sorry, I know you’re fed up of the names, but I’m just as fed up of watching you flounder.”
Smikelliol. Thank you, Zel. And thanks for, for earlier. Making me summon Avaelar. I wouldn’t have thought of that anything like so fast. You saved my life.
“Again.”
Again. I smiled. I do hope those people back in Oldtown are okay…
“They’ll be fine.” And then, almost immediately, “Your glyphstone’s about to go off. It’s something… something important.”
I reached through my robe into my satchel, fishing out my glyphstone – and the very second it was in my hand it started to warm up, glowing and humming.
I held it up, tangentially aware of Leafcloak cocking her head at me curiously – then her hand reaching into a pocket, presumably to listen to her own version of the message.
It wasn’t a champion or magister. It wasn’t even a mage. Instead I saw a bearded man in leather armour, the derided ‘H’-shaped crest of Sticktown embossed in the centre. He had a watchman’s twelve-spoked silver badge on the left side of his chest and three silver arrows on the right – markings of high rank. A Sticktown watch captain.
For most of my youth, men such as him had been the bogeyman. Now I summoned and slew real bogeymen, and I was basically about to take orders from the watch.
How things had changed.
But as he spoke with his thoughts, my mood sank. Dread settled over me.
“All champions.” A pause. “General alert. Red rain fell from the sky after you left. Lord’s Knuckle’s under attack, and Helbert’s Bend’s on fire -“
I broke the glyphstone-trance.
Leafcloak was too distracted to stop me even if she could’ve.
With a single beat of my glowing wings, I was gone.