Firebrand (27 page)

Sean McTavish grabbed his son solidly by the shoulders. “I’m glad you’re here, me boy.”

They clasped forearms in a firm greeting of father and son as a shadow fell over them. They looked up in unison. A winged shape passed overhead like a black cloud passing in front of the moon. Several of the soldiers nearby crouched, holding their arms above their heads as if to ward off a blow from above.

“The Dullahan,” Sean said. “The messenger of Gorash. The storm is coming. His army is close.”

“Have you seen Amber?” David asked above the ever-building wind. “We were together when she activated the Triad altar I was holding her, I swear I was, and then she was just gone.”

Sean could feel the overpowering anguish within his son and was about to offer what comfort he could when suddenly the earth shook with in a deafening rumble as a halo of light rose just beyond the gathering.

“Prepare yourself, son. It has begun.” He turned and as he did, the line of men behind him parted, a path appearing that led toward the glow.

He looked at his father’s face. Sean nodded slowly and David took off running toward the light. When he got to the corona, he dropped to his knees. He extended his hand toward the radiance. A single word rose above all other sounds swirling in the darkness.

“Amber!”

Chapter Twenty-Six

Amber could see them all. Teezal, flanked by Kubla, stood next to her father. She smiled. He was safe. Her fairy mother and a man whose arm wrapped around her shoulder in a protective manner stepped closer, followed by her grandfather, the Mage. Amber watched Tolhram reach down and place his hand on David’s shoulder.

Only then did she feel a sense of dread race though her.

In David’s face she saw terror. As he cried out her name, it danced with the helplessness she saw in his eyes.

What had happened? A moment ago she was in his arms in the center of ice-blue fire and they were rising together from Trytia. She had felt safe, confident. They were going to save the worlds together.

Now she was alone. Trapped in some sort of sparkling vortex that swirled around her.

“David!” she cried out to him not knowing if he could hear her. “Why did you let me go?”

She lifted her gaze from David and looked around. The scene before her was total chaos, a cacophony of noise and confusion. A sudden rush of sound thundered like an explosion. Dust rose, further darkening the air as huge slabs of earth crashed to the ground in the distance.

Amber reeled inside the vortex, the ground around her splitting and cracking releasing waves and waves of energy that rippled the air. She could hear David calling to her. She could see him rise and try to reach her before Kubla grabbed him and held him fast.

Small fires erupted from cervices in the rocks but no one moved outside the vortex. All eyes remained on her and she knew. Her destiny was at hand.

She would not let the worlds down. She closed her eyes and squared her shoulders. She extended her hands to the amulet still embedded in the stone lock at her feet. From it the magic rose and locked around her. Using every fiber of her being, she became one with the power.

She was swept to the creation, crashing through each world in turn. An endless stream of sorrow and passion filled her as she watched a frenzied passing of time. Curling her hands into fists, she screamed and time crashed to a stop.

Like a firefly from a millions years before trapped in fossilized amber, she stood in the streams of light moving around her. Her essence lay rooted in the vortex but it spanned all the worlds, holding them together with the last of her combined strength.

Around those outside, the terrible sound of the earth ripping apart stopped.

“Look!” David cried, pointing to Amber. “She’s stopped the annihilation.” He rose to his feet. “Hold on, baby. We’re going to get you out of there.” He moved toward her but was once again found himself in Kubla’s grasp.

“Let me go, we don’t know how long she can hold it. We have to get her out of there,” He shouted, struggling against the strong hands that held him fast.

“You can’t enter,” Tolhram warned. “It could mean instant death.”

David turned, his breath ragged, his face tense. “But I was there and I didn’t die. Tolhram nodded to Kubla who released David from his grasp. “You cannot change what must be. Only she can stop the end of all things.”

David’s heartbeat climbed and his breathing became deep and ragged as his frustration rose. “All this power and none of you can do a goddamn thing,” he said from behind clenched teeth.

Sean put his arms around his son. “What she is and what she does is greater than any of us. Her power is the only power that matters. The day is absolute. Accept this son.”

David shook him off. “Accept it? She’s going to die, father. Can you accept the fact our child is going to die with her?”

“A child?”

David nodded. He grabbed his father’s arm. “And your grandchild.”

Marcus stormed to them and spun David around to face him. “Amber is pregnant? Why didn’t you stop her?”

“Don’t you think I tried? That I’ve been trying? I thought I could save her,” David said defending his decision. He turned away from Marcus’ accusing eyes and looked at Amber. “I thought I could save them both.” He looked at his empty hands. “I held her as tightly as I could but somehow she was ripped from my arms.”

From behind them another voiced rose. “My grandchild?” David and Sean turned in unison.

Brian McKenna stood looking at the display of power that held Amber in its embrace. He stepped as close as he dared to it and held up his hand, palm outward. “I wish I would have died in the ice rather than see this.” Slowly he turned his gaze to Marcus. “You raised her. Laughed with her, cried with her, shared things that could only be shared between a father and a child.” With an almost painful motion, he shifted his gaze to David. “And you were able to hold her in yours arms and love her as the woman she became.” A tear rolled down his cheek as he returned his gaze to Amber. “I had none of that. I never even had a chance to know her. This is all I am allowed. Waiting to see her die,”

David strode to him and put his hands on Brian’s shoulders. “It’s not over. Not yet. You will hold her in your arms.” His gaze moved from Brian to Marcus before he turned toward Alara and Tolhram. “We all will. I swear it.”

Marcus did not feel David’s confidence as he looked at Amber still locked in the embrace of her fate. He edged toward her. The power of the vortex was incredible as it teased along the hair on his arms but incredibly, he could not feel any heat.

When he was about a foot from her, he stopped. She floated about three feet above the Triad altar, eyes cast downward, arms extended slightly at her sides palms down as though pushing against a great unseen force. Tendrils of auburn hair swirled around her head and she pulsated up and down upon a sea of energy. Sparks of light pulsed and formed star-like masses around her, falling in and out of focus. She looked anomalous as if she belonged to no one world, as his mind’s eyes remembered the baby he’d lain in his wife’s arms and the little girl who ran to him with a face full of tears when the wheel came off her wagon.

Slowly she lifted her head and looked at him, her eyes black and back-lit from inside.

“Daddy.” Her voice entered his mind.

In a measure of a nano second every moment he’d spent with this idyllic person came crashing down on him. He would not let her die. “I’m coming, Amber. I’m coming.”

With a scream to give him the courage he needed, Marcus leapt into the power core. He grabbed hold of Amber.

“Dad, no!”

He wanted to comfort her but no words would form as he felt the blue flame flare up around him. In moments, the ice-fire engulfed him.

Outside the others surged toward the vortex but were repelled by arcs of electrical current that spiked to the ground in rapid-fire flashes. They could do nothing more than watch helplessly as his skin melted away leaving first the muscles, then the organs and then only bone before finally bursting into a black ash and dissolving into nothingness.

“We have to finish the ritual,” David cried, shielding his eyes from the blinding flashes. “We may have moment to pull her out when the last sword is placed.”

He drew the Sword of Adam from the scabbard around his waist and thrust it into the first energy slit at the edge of the Triad altar. As it slid into place, blue light shot up from the scarred ground in a ninety degree angle, shooting up in a gleaming tower of light without end.

“Teezal! Hurry!” David shouted.

She quickly placed the Sword of Light into place. A second tower emerged, red light crossing the blue over the altar.

“Now the third!”

A few fae soldiers cleared a path as Plim Nightwing approached from the left. “I don’t do this for anyone but the pure-born troll,” he said taking the Sword of Shadows from Kubla’s hand. “Especially not for you and the tainted ones like you.”

A sneer curled Kubla’s lips. David slapped a hand to the warrior’s chest. “His motives mean nothing at this point. It has to be placed by a purebred troll.”

Nostril’s flaring with barely controlled anger, Kubla acquiesced and stepped back.

Plim raised the sword. As he began the downward arc of the sword, a spear pierced his back. Wide-eyed he stumbled backward, the sword falling from his hand.

From a slab of rock overhead, Gorash loomed. “Now who will place the last key in the lock?” A flash of lightning outlined the troll king in a black silhouette. No longer in his human form, his misshapen body cast a grotesque shadow on the ground. He grabbed another spear and pointed it. “Get them! Kill them all. Their skulls will line my lair.”

“The sword,” Plim said hoarsely, the spear pinning him to the ground. “Don’t let Gorash have the sword.” He reached out, his fingers finding the hilt just before his body jerked and the final breath left his body.

“Down!” Kubla shouted with such intensity that everyone near the Triad altar dropped to the ground as one.

A crossbow bolt hissed over their heads as David dove forward, grabbing the sword as the screams of his comrades rang in his ears. He rolled to the left, a spear just missing his head. He watched Kubla snatch up his bow and fire back, giving him a chance to race for shelter behind a huge boulder nearby.

Teezal joined Kubla firing a volley of arrows as Brian dragged the Mage and Alara behind another of the structures. Two more bolts shot from the blackness, one catching Corin in the back as he reached for his quiver. He fell to the ground in a heap.

Accompanied by grunts and growls, from the bushes across the clearing, leaped an army of trolls, all heavily armed. They charged, heedless of the arrows that clanked against their armor. They howled and shouted as they ran, sure of their victory.

Though the wound was a mortal one, Corin raised his bow, determined to take one down before he died. Teezal ran to help him but was stopped as one of the attacking trolls shot up in front of her. It leered as it raised its heavy sword and prepared to strike. But instead it gasped in surprise.

Behind Teezal rose a wild flurry of motion. She turned to see an army of humans, Sean McTavish in the lead, surging toward them. Not wasting the element of surprise, Teezal grasped the dagger in her boot and stabbed the troll through the neck as around her, arrows from the humans’ bows stung the advancing trolls like angry wasps.

Battle rage inflamed her, her nerves now tempered steel. Her aim was unerring as she drew back and fired. The arrow hissed through the air and struck its target squarely in the chest.

Humans, trolls, fairies and their blendings clashed in a battle to sway the course of destiny, some moving like beasts of prey, others falling as the defeated.

Gorash howled as one by one he cleared a path to David. Just as David thrust a mortal blow into an attacker, Gorash jabbed him in the back with the blunt end of his spear. Stunned, David stumbled forward and spun around.

“We meet again, human,” Gorash hissed, the spear in his hand arcing toward David’s head,

David used the Sword of Shadows to block the blow. “We’ll finish what we started back at Donahyde Castle.”

“But this time, even if I do not strike another blow,” his yellowed eyes shifted toward Amber, still locked within the vortex, “I win. There is no purebred to put the last sword into place. The time of human and fae alike is at an end. The time of Gorash will soon begin.”

With both hands, David drove his sword upward, Gorash narrowly escaping it by twisting out of the way, the force of the thrust sending David reeling past him. He hit the ground and slid on the loose rock. Dazed, his eyes rolled to his back and looked into the face of hell.

“Save your strength, human,” Gorash hissed as a circle of troll soldiers surrounded him. “You’ll need it to die!” His perverse laugh filled the air.

“Master, the troll forces push the enemy to the edge of the abyss. Our victory is at hand.” Jolinax pushed his way forward.

“Take the sword from him,” Gorash ordered.

Jolinax ripped it from David’s hand and held it in front of his eyes. “As Troll Moot, I will carry this proudly.”

“Troll Moot?” Gorash spat out the words as he glared at Jolinax. “Do you think a lowly, bumbling creature such as you could lead my vast army of trolls?”

Jolinax snapped his gaze from the sword to Gorash. “You said I would be Troll Moot Chieftain with many human women and fairies as my slaves.”

Gorash threw back his head and laughed. “Fool. When the worlds collide after the Triad fails, there will be no need for Troll Moot. I will claim all that is left. After thinning the numbers of human and fae to a manageable level, there will be no need for your services.”

“You lied to me.”

“I told you what you wanted to hear.”

Jolinax stepped backward and looked at the sword in his hand. “If I can’t be Troll Moot, you can’t rule the universe.” With a grunt, he thrust the last key into the lock.

Gorash’s screams rose as the last shaft of light sliced the sky. Its green glow crossed the blue and red of the first two keys forming a tower of white that flowed into the sky. From the core, balls of pure energy sparked upward, exploding into a gentle rain as they appeared to touch the sky.

As the shimmering droplets fell to the ground, they began to heal the deep cracks and gaping fissures, putting out the raging fires and calming the tremors that had wracked the ground. Green shoots of vegetation appeared, healing evil disease that had infested the soil.

From the center of the energy core, a beam flashed, hitting Gorash squarely in the chest. With a cry of agony, he vanished as the shaft of light disappeared as quickly as it had appeared. Shouts of joy and cheers echoed in the air.

David ran to Amber, his smile fading. She was still trapped in the swirling light.

“Something’s wrong. She’s still in there,” he shouted, panic rioting in his eyes. Soon the vortex was ringed with those who loved her. Around them the earth healed but Amber had not moved.

Teezal rested her hand on his arm. “She was not meant to return to us,” she said sadly.

David grasped her shoulders. “What do you mean? She did it. It’s over.” He turned his head to Amber. “She has to come back. We have to raise our child.”

Tolhram shook his head sadly. He put his hand on David’s shoulder. “It is beyond our understanding. We must be content in knowing that she met her destiny.”