Bloodstone (42 page)

****

“Arrgh!” Mirianna swung her sword in an arc, cutting down three Krad. One part of her didn’t think it fair to kill them while they stood stunned, but the newly discovered part knew fair play didn’t matter against beasts, and there were yet too many of the creatures within the fortress. Nearby, Pumble wielded his sword with surprising dexterity for such a large target, and Rees shot arrow after arrow, moving forward as he retrieved his supply from fallen Krad.

She ignored the blood, ignored the stench, and charged after the vanishing mage, but Ayliss stopped her with an outstretched arm. “He’s getting away!” Mirianna yelled. “We need him to save Durren!”

“He’s done his part. The rest is up to us.” Dirty face grim, she turned and held out her hand. “Gareth, I need a weapon.”

Panting and drenched with sweat, the boy materialized out of the shadows of the Great Hall. He held out his staff and the Sword of Drakkonwehr.

“Stand behind me with the Sword,” Ayliss said, taking the staff. “We need to hold them off until Durren can get here.”

“He’s coming?” Mirianna gasped. “But he’s in the Dragon.”

“Not anymore.” Ayliss shoved hair out of her face. “Gareth put him back by the pool. Its healing power should restore him.”

Mirianna’s heart skittered at the ‘should.’ She thrust her hand into her pocket, reassuring herself the bloodstones remained next to her skin. They were warm to the touch—or maybe she fancied that. Regardless, her nerves calmed, and she knew she couldn’t wait for her hopes—for Durren—to materialize. The Krad were already awakening.

****

Outside the fortress, darkness enveloped Syryk. A small band of Krad padded on nearly silent feet around him. He would barely know they were there but for the stench and the insistent pressure of one or another paw guiding him, not downward into the valley, but upward, toward the gates of Beggeth. Overhead, a shadow passed, and he glanced at it, one last look at the Dragon lit by the distant fires within the walls.

So close…

But this new plan was infinitely better—or would be, if his charms could dampen the smell of his blood long enough for this band of Krad to escort him across the mountain tops to the Demon Master himself.

Gareth gripped the Sword of Drakkonwehr with both hands. He swung it from side to side, protecting the she-lion—Ayliss’s—back as she bashed Krad after Krad with his staff. The beast-men’s shrieks hammered at his ears, but they told him how many swarmed them and from which direction. He’d struck several with the broken blade, and his hands ran with something slicker than sweat.

He didn’t think about killing anymore. This was like fighting off wolves. You did what you had to do to survive. To protect those you loved. And he loved the she-lion—Ayliss. And Mirianna, and the Shadow Man. Even Pumble. He wasn’t sure about the man called Rees, but at least that man seemed to be helping them. Not like the traitor Syryk.

“Left!” Ayliss yelled, and he thrust. Matted fur brushed his fingers. Gareth pulled the Sword back, and warm liquid sprayed his arm, his face. He gagged, but resisted the urge to swipe the blood away. He couldn’t drop the weapon now. The Shadow Man was coming.

****

Durren’s head swam—colors, images, memories, all a blur. The light ahead faded, and he thought he might fall—fail—inches before his goal. Then one image separated from the rest...

He saw himself crouching, as always, in a rock-hewn tunnel, lit by a distant torch, while tendrils of smoke oozed from crevices around a massive oaken door. They spiraled upward, feeding a thick yellow haze overhead. He coughed. Sweat dripped from his hair, stinging his eyes. The sound of rushing footsteps brought him swiveling to his feet, shield up, heart pounding. His fingers gripped the hilt of the ancient double-edged Sword of Drakkonwehr, where the large bloodstone embedded in the intersection of hand guard, blade, and hilt glowed softly, a dark, deep red…

With a gasped, “No!” he shook off the nightmare. He’d lived it long enough. This was the end; he would pay for his mistakes once and for all. If only he had the Sword…

He saw it just as he hurdled boulders nearly blocking the Great Hall door. Gareth and Ayliss, back to back, she swinging the boy’s staff and Gareth wielding the broken weapon, surrounded by Krad, alive and dead. Drawing his knife, Durren charged the horde.

He may have screamed some war cry. He had no recollection, and certainly no hearing other than the snick of the blade and the roar of his own blood rushing his ears. But the Krad fell over themselves—and their fallen comrades—fleeing into the shadows.

Ayliss lowered the staff and leaned on it, panting, while Gareth turned to her and said, “Now?”

“Now,” Durren’s sister replied.

The boy, instead of handing over the weapon, switched his grip on the hilt. Holding the Sword with the blade pointing down, he raised it over his head.

Dear Koronolan, the boy means to kill himself!
Horrified, Durren gasped, “Gareth, no!” and threw himself at the boy.
Ayliss, damn you!
his mind messaged,
Gareth’s not meant to be a sacrifice!

No.
She smiled that serene cat’s smile he hated.
He’s meant to do what neither you nor I can do.

The Sword hilt reached the top of its arc and paused for an agonizingly long moment while Durren willed his muscles to plow through air thick as mud pulling at him. He had to stop this senseless death. While he inched forward, time slowed, contracted, reversed...

He saw himself once more before the oaken door. Rushing footsteps brought him swiveling to his feet, shield up.

His best friend—and second in command—Errek Eolen rounded the corner. “I’ve bolted the tunnel door. I don’t think the guards know we’ve made it down here.”

Durren blew out the breath he’d been holding. “The dragon’s stirring. We have to stop the mage first.” He nodded toward the door. “Think your axe’ll open that?”

“Three strokes—if there’s no spell on the wood.”

“There won’t be.” When the big man shot him a questioning look, he stifled a sigh. He hoped he wouldn’t have to explain how his whole plan relied on the little he remembered of Owender’s
History of the People
. He wished—again—he’d paid more attention to the scrolls, but it had always been the Sword that drew his hand and his heart. Gripping it now, he recited, “‘True hearts and no fear, against a mage’s power, hold dear.’”

True hearts.
The words penetrated the nightmare, and he recognized Ayliss’s voice.
Trust me, Durren. For once in your life, think before you act.

For as much as Ayliss confounded him, they were blood, and his blood told him Ayliss would never hurt Gareth. Twisting in the air, he stopped his forward motion. And time returned.

The Sword flashed. Durren’s heart dropped to his stomach, but the boy plunged the broken blade straight down into the stone pavement between his feet.

Sparks flew. The ground shook. A crack split the stone like a tear ripped in the very foundation of the fortress. Rocks tumbled from the walls. Ayliss threw herself over the boy, who had pitched forward as the Sword sank to the hilt. “Don’t let go!” she cried.

Above, the Dragon screamed. Durren fell to his knees. Pain like the stab of a red-hot knife stole his breath. He doubled over, gripping his side, feeling the old wound fresh and bleeding under his fingers.
Dear Koronolan!
He dragged himself forward as the Dragon crashed to the paving stones behind him and the fortress shuddered with the impact. “Ayliss! What in Beggeth…?”

Mirianna clung to her sword and torch, but raised her arm against the dirt peppering her face. She dared not close her eyes, lest any of the beast-men shrieking around her recovered sense enough to strike.

From what she could make out, the Dragon had fallen out of the sky and crushed a score or more of Krad. The giant head still snorted flame, and leathery wings beat at the ground like a bird trying to right itself. Over the clatter of falling rocks, she heard Pumble’s panicked screams cut short by Rees’s barked command. She glimpsed them standing back to back against the remaining horde, who once again had lost focus. No thanks to the mage this time, for the Krad seemed not enchanted but, she hoped, demoralized by their mounting losses. The shadows still crawled with furry bodies, but more fled than entered. If she and the others could keep the momentum they’d gained…

She risked a glance over her shoulder. Amid the settling dust, her father had fallen, but he waved away her concern and, still kneeling, tossed more wood on the fire. Near the Great Hall she spotted three forms sprawled but moving on the pavement, Ayliss, Gareth, and—her heart lurched—the man she loved. She stuttered a step forward, calling, “Durren!”

****

Gareth spat grit. The she-lion—Ayliss’s—weight had flattened his every bone, even his chin, into the stone. His elbows burned, and the fall had likely scraped away both sleeve and skin, but none of that mattered. What mattered was the ground no longer shook. And he still gripped the Sword.

Ayliss lifted herself off him, and he breathed—then coughed. She grasped his shoulders. “Hang on to the hilt, Gareth. You have to get up and pull.”

She helped him to his knees. The movement dug knife-edged pebbles into his forearms, and he sucked in a hiss. He hoped the quaking earth hadn’t tipped over the bucket of that special water. He would need its healing power when this was over.

Ayliss’s arms circled his chest, and her hair brushed his cheeks. Her heart beat against his shoulder blades the way her lion-heart had once soothed and cradled him not so very long ago. “Are you ready?”

He nodded. Dragging first one foot and then the other forward and underneath him, he concentrated on holding tight to the hilt while she balanced him. He took a breath, spat more grit from his mouth, and pulled. For something buried only a hand-span or two deep, the blade stuck fast. Tightening his grip, he pulled harder.

The Sword gave with a sudden shriek of steel. Just as Ayliss stopped his backward stumble, Gareth flinched at twin screams of pain, the Shadow Man’s very human one and the Dragon’s bellow.

****

One hand pressed to his side, Durren crawled toward his sister and the boy. His head buzzed with pain and the sound of someone shouting a long way off. His name? He couldn’t tell. The buckled pavement separating him from his goal rose like a mountain, but he had to know if he could trust the image imprinted on his brain. The Sword should never have penetrated the stone. It should have shattered upon impact. Had it? Were those sparks bits of the blade disintegrating?
By Kiros!

Mere feet away, Ayliss had wrapped arms around the boy, helping him gain his footing. Gareth’s face shone white and pinched under its coat of dirt, but he clung to the buried hilt. Straightening, the boy began to pull.

What in Beggeth…?

Steel sang. Sparks cascaded. Light flashed on a broad, gleaming blade, and before Durren could comprehend what he’d seen, the thing that pierced his side a moment ago, now pulled back, searing a white-hot trail in its wake. He writhed on the ground, screaming, while his nerves vibrated with shock and pain.

And then it was gone, and he collapsed onto his back, spent and boneless. When he opened his eyes, Ayliss and the boy stood over him. “It’s over now, Durren,” she said, sagging with both hands on the boy’s staff. “You’re whole again. You and the Dragon and the Sword.”

Gareth dropped to his knees at Durren’s side. “Are you all right, sir? I’ve fixed your sword…I think.”

Durren sat up. As though in a dream, he grasped the weapon the boy held out. The blade shone in the firelight, the full unmarred, restored length of it. The hilt fit to his hand, just as it always had, and the weight of it balanced perfectly, so light he could be holding nothing but air. Nothing but an illusion...

Staring at Ayliss, he rose. “Nobody but a Drakkonwehr…”

“Can wield the Sword,” she finished. “That’s right, Durren.”

He expected the cat’s smile, but none came. Instead, she reached down and helped the boy to his feet, all the while watching him with those green eyes he’d never really known as well as he thought.

He frowned at her, thoroughly confounded, and meant to demand an explanation, but the Dragon bellowed, “Drakkonwehr! The beasts return!”

At the same time he heard what his pain-wracked brain had heard before, but not comprehended, the voice of the woman he loved. He spun.

Across the courtyard littered with Krad bodies, Mirianna was calling, “Durren!” In the firelight, her hair billowed like a cloud about her face, and she brandished sword and torch like a warrior of old. He had never loved her more.

Near her, the Dragon gained its feet and blasted flame at a group of Krad slithering down the wall beside the gate. While those shrieked and fled, more Krad poured through other cracks and crevices to the left and right. Rees and Pumble charged in to meet the rightward group. Mirianna dashed off to the left.

“I’m coming!” he shouted, pelting after her.

The Sword whistled as he waded in beside Mirianna. She flashed him a smile that made his heart sing. She swung right, thrust the torch to her left, and spun to catch a Krad behind a rock.
Dear Koronolan, she’s magnificent!

Ayliss said he was whole again. If that explained the surge of energy filling him now, well and good. He needed every ounce of power he could summon. The others had done more damage to the Krad horde in his brief absence than he could’ve hoped, and this current assault looked to his trained eye to be a last-ditch attempt to overwhelm them. If they could just hold out a bit longer…

Mirianna stumbled. Two Krad leapt to confront her. Durren’s heart skittered, but she righted herself and skewered one while scorching the arm of the other. Behind her rushed two more she couldn’t possibly see. By Kiros, she’d die if he didn’t help her, but he was too far away for the Sword. Durren seized his knife. If he could strike the one in the lead, she’d have time to turn and defend herself. He grasped the blade between fingers and thumb, reared his arm back to throw…and time stopped, the world wrenched itself inside out, and went dark…