Sacrifice (Book 4) (31 page)

“How many Dhrons are there?” Gen asked. “I have met Ghama and Hekka. Were the birds another?”

“Yes. That was Sethra Dhron. There is another, the unspeakable horror Khrona Dhron, an abominable amalgamation of men. But these are not your immediate concern. Mikkik commissioned Sir Tornus and I separately to kill the Chalaine and report her death to him. Only then can his victory be total and irreversible.”

“Report where?”

“Elde Luri Mora,” Joranne said. “It is no longer denied him. He will go to enjoy the spoils of his work. It is there he promised that he would undo the curse he put upon me, but I no longer believe he has the power to do so. I have sought so long to be free of him, to be rid of all the elder races. I helped the Millim Eri find you, Gen, to blunt his influence over you. I swear it. I only ask now that you help me be free of this curse.”

Gen doubted her information and her sincerity. “In exchange for what?”

“My help! I can aid you! If we work together, we can conquer. But first you must protect the Chalaine. She must be dead to all and hidden away. Sir Tornus or I must report it to Mikkik, and soon. Since he is without Mynmagic, he will no longer be able to pull the information from our minds as he once did, so we can lie to him.”

Gen nodded. “Even so, I cannot see how to restore Elde Luri Mora, even if we can get the Chalaine there. I can raise a person from the dead with the power of blood, but a city? With Chertanne, I had to reach into the Abyss and pull his spirit back into his body. Where is the spirit of the city?”

Joranne tapped her lip thoughtfully. “The city was suffused with some essence of Eldaloth that tortured Mikkik for ages. There must have been a place, a center from which it emanated. It is Athan who carried out the deed and to him that Mikkik gave instruction on how to destroy it. He must know.”

Gen rubbed his bearded chin and sat back to consider, rifling through all of the lore packed away in his mind, finding that the knowledge of his three trainers availed him little in such a unique circumstance. Deep inside he knew the attempt had to be made, but was loathe to do it. But as he allowed himself to accept the necessity, possibilities started to unlock in his mind that he had not considered.

“If the Chalaine is bled, and must be bled multiple times, we have to have a way to heal her,” Gen said. “If I teach you, Joranne, you could use the power of my blood to heal her. She can heal me with a touch.”

The Ash Witch’s clouded eyes brightened. “Yes! That should do nicely.”

“But we must act quickly, and I must put everyone in danger. I will do what I can to grant you of your wishes, Joranne and Tornus, but you must help me in this.”

“What are you suggesting?” Mirelle asked, face concerned.

“Sir Tornus will travel to Elde Luri Mora immediately, but he will tell Mikkik that the Chalaine lives and is hidden away in Mikmir.”

“What?!” Joranne exclaimed.

“The Chalaine, Joranne, and I will travel behind him a couple of days. When Mikkik sends his might against Mikmir to kill the Chalaine, we will enter Elde Luri Mora and perform the bleeding. Mirelle, I will need you to impersonate the Chalaine here while we are gone. Will you do that?”

She nodded. “I will.”

“Volney, I will need you to continue on as Mirelle’s personal guard. Gerand, I am promoting you to ambassador to Tolnor. You will leave immediately to gather support from your nation and bring it here. You will coordinate with General Torunne and General Harband on how best to protect Mikmir upon your return.”

“I will,” Gerand said, bowing.

“There is one thing you aren’t considering,” Mirelle warned. “The Church.”

“True,” Gen admitted. “It will be difficult to gauge their reaction to what has happened. If Athan is convinced of his error, then we may have an ally, but the man was so blinded by Mikkik he may still attempt to thwart us.”

“And what of Aughmere?” Gerand asked.

“Ulean Mail was the Shadan there before the rule of the Padras,” said Gen. “I will send a letter asking for his support and strength, but we have no strong ties there. If there were time, I would challenge him for his throne. A host of Aughmerian soldiers would aid us a great deal, and I never thought I would find myself saying that.

“As for my absence, tell the people I have gone to gather strength to Mikmir, to raise army to defend it or some such nonsense. I will take some of my knights with me, but the defense of Mikmir will fall to the regents and Generals. Even if we succeed in Elde Luri Mora, Mikkik’s creatures may still press the attack until they are utterly destroyed.”

Plan set, Gen leaned back in his throne and regarded his somber friends and the two fiends. One more night of peace was all he could offer any of them.

“Volney and Gerand, go and take an evening and a day with your wives. I will watch over the Chalaine tonight. Sir Tornus, I’m afraid I will need to lock you up.”

The Craver grinned, “You are wise.”

“We prepare tomorrow and leave early the day after.”

A sudden orange glow in the dark windows flared, lighting the Great Hall in a fiery light. It subsided and flared again, like a flame blown down by a gale only to burn brighter. Maewen entered the hall at a jog.

“Lord Mikmir,” she said. “Portal magic still works, but you should see the sky. It is on fire! I have never seen the like.”

As one they left the Great Hall, striding out into the dark to find a sky filled with smoke and long tongues of flame as the small fragments of the moons cut streaks of fire across the blackness. The celestial conflagration crescendoed, the orange and black sky filling their vision with a roiling, churning storm of flames.

Gen pulled the Chalaine close.

“Is this the end, Gen?” she asked, voice subdued.

“The sky weeps fire for the loss of the moons,” he replied. “The sun will rise in an angry sky tomorrow, and we will rise with it into a new day. You are still our hope, Chalaine, and while you are alive, the end is not yet.”

Mirelle ascended the Tower of the Chalaines for the first time in her life. Volney had tried to convince her that such an ascent was a poor idea, but the young man’s complying nature could never hold a resolution long enough to cross her for too long. Cadaen had been four times the stubborn mule that Volney was, and she had managed that old soldier for most of her life. The tower, used to house a decoy for the Chalaines, was also the best vantage point for a clear view of the Kingsblood Lake and the city of Mikmir that surrounded it.

A clear view, however, was hard to come by anymore. The burning sky had persisted for two days before finally subsiding, and the smoke and haze had turned the days into twilight. Some of the flaming chunks of the moons had driven craters into the ground and set fields ablaze, though as for that, since Elde Luri Mora had been destroyed, the crops and trees had withered steadily, whether from the darkening of the sky or some loss of the essence of Ki’Hal, no one could say.

Unused to the veil she had worn since her daughter left, Mirelle had to pick her way carefully up the dark, narrow staircase that led to the circular upper room and its advantageous prospect. Since the events of Echo Hold, the decoys had retired from their post, so when Mirelle and Volney opened the gilded door, they found the richly appointed room dusty and smelling stale. Mirelle thought the furnishings and decorations had probably not changed since the first decoy for the Chalaines had roomed there. The tapestries were faded, and the blocky, bold furniture was out of style with the more modern, delicate pieces that tended to curve and sport clever filigrees. The reds of the carpets and dark woods of the rooms’ appointments almost gave it an Aughmerian feel.

Not bothering with the closed shutters, they crossed to another door that opened onto a balcony that encircled the entire tower, allowing a view in every direction. It was stuck fast, and only a vigorous yank from Volney freed it.

“We shouldn’t spend too much time out of doors,” he said firmly, and Mirelle smiled. She could almost feel like the Chalaine again back when she had been overprotected and shut away.

“We won’t be long,” Mirelle promised as they stepped out.

The sense of vertigo took a moment to beat down. A chest high balustrade protected them from a fall, but regularly spaced arched cutouts left enough of the precipitous view in sight to send her heart into her throat.

Volney paled. “I grew up on a plain,” he lamented by way of explanation.

From the tower, the smoke and the haze actually seemed worse. An enthusiastic breeze did little to alleviate the gritty dust and ash grays soiling the air. The sharp smell of smoke pervaded everywhere, some columns of fire still rising from burning fields without the city walls. Feeling more comfortable with their elevated perch, Mirelle leaned against it while Volney stood at obedient attention with his back flat to the tower wall as if stuck to it.

Four days ago, Falael and Maewen had encountered the vanguard of Mikkik’s awful host as they reached the eastern edge of Rhugoth. The people there had long since fled, but Mikkik’s servants had not lost an opportunity to raze and burn everything in their path. If Maewen was correct, the army would reach the fortified lower wall of Mikmir by nightfall with one purpose—to root through every building until they found the Chalaine and deprived her of her life.

Mirelle peered to the east. There was nothing save some procrastinating stragglers who had taken their time before heeding the warning that had followed on Gen’s and the Chalaine’s heels after they secretly left the city.

The thought of the two of them stung Mirelle’s eyes. She missed them both terribly and had been so distraught when they said farewell that she hugged her daughter for so long that she and Gen had started much later than they intended. Mirelle had even kissed Gen on the lips in front of his intended bride, though she hoped it was a short enough peck to avoid suspicion of her true feelings.

The two of them were all she truly loved in the world, and to send them off to an uncertain and dangerous fate, far from where she could help or counsel either one, aggravated her emotions and made her restless. Even worse, she felt useless. She was bait. The Generals knew far better than she how to handle the impending war, but she desperately wanted to grab a sword and
do
something.

The inner courtyard of the castle below her stirred with relentless activity, the once-beautiful grounds now littered with temporary accommodations and the refuse of the soldiers who lived there. The bulk of the combined armies of Tolnor and Mikmir occupied the streets of the city. The mass of fleeing citizenry they had sent north and west out of the path of Mikkik’s creatures, but many people had refused to leave and found themselves host to soldiers quartered with them. As yet, no word had come from Aughmere, though Mirelle still held out hope that they would come to Rhugoth’s relief. While Maewen had been unsure of the exact numbers of the enemy they faced, she assured them that to her eyes it appeared Mikkik had scraped every nook and cranny of Ki’Hal and sent what he found to Rhugoth.

“We should descend, Milady,” Volney suggested after a stiff wind kicked up.

Mirelle turned toward him. “Where did you send your wife, Lena, and her boy?”

“To family in the north. I have a grand uncle there who has a fortified estate that is a bit out of the way. It’s the best I could have hoped for.”

Mirelle nodded. “She’ll be much safer than any of us, you most of all. I must thank you again for volunteering for this duty. I am sure you would prefer to be in the streets with Gerand.”

“I am honored that Lord Mikmir—well, Gen or whatever—chose me for this post, though I certainly could not fill Cadaen’s shoes. I wish I would have been with him and Gen in Echo Hold when they came for you.”

Her days imprisoned in Echo Hold and being dragged along the streets to the burning pole seemed a blurry haze in her mind, and she wondered if Gen had done some trick of Mynmagic to soften the memory of those awful events. All she could remember was the rapturous joy of finding Gen alive and making sure he felt her delight. Her sorrow for Cadaen’s death, while poignant, had lost its weight in the revelation of Gen’s return from the same fate.

“Look there, Milady,” Volney said urgently, finally taking a step away from the tower. “In the eastern sky.”

“I see nothing but a cloud . . . but no.”

“That’s a flock of birds,” Volney said. “I wasn’t there, but didn’t some flock of birds attack Lord Gen?”

“Yes. Joranne called it Sethra Dhron, which apparently means
the horror of birds
. Hekka Dhron was the beetles. Gen thinks he destroyed it.”

“This just gets worse and worse. Snakes. Beetles. Now birds.”

As the lustrous, deadly birds neared the city through the murky sky, their awful, shrieking call pierced Mirelle’s and Volney’s ears. Trumpets and commotion responded in the streets below, and a cloud of arrows rose to meet the avian threat. Some few birds plummeted from the sky, but the entire flock swarmed downward into the ranks of soldiers in the city, diving and then rising again. A small pocket of birds broke away from the main group and pushed against the wind toward the tower where they watched.

Volney grabbed her arm. “It’s begun. You’re underground from now on.”

She didn’t resist as he pulled her away and slammed the door shut. No one was sure how many of the magical protections about the Chalaine’s complex still worked. As they closed the gilded door and started down the stairs, the sound of broken glass and snapping shutters preceded the raucous din of Mikkik’s birds streaming into the deserted room. They had come for her, and it was time to hide.

Gerand fussed with his helmet, unused to wearing one. In his younger days training with his father, he would hardly be caught without one, but now a helmet was proving a nuisance. He sat astride his horse in the streets of the inner city of Mikmir. The outer city was abandoned, save for the most stubborn of the citizenry, and the main eastern gate was shut. General Harband and his hardened army took the honor of defending the main approach, and Gerand was glad; when he had arrived in Tolnor as ambassador, he found that with the death of his brother he had become the Duke of his estate. He felt ill prepared to lead the men he had mustered to come with him.

His portion of the Tolnorian army, consisting of three hundred foot soldiers and fifty knights, occupied a road two streets north of where General Harband’s men waited for the impending attack. Between them was General Torunne, Volney’s father. General Harband placed most of the Tolnorian regiments in support positions since they were, as a whole, unfamiliar with the city and exhausted from frantic preparations and travel. They came ready to fight, however, and Gerand was proud of them for taking up a cause not immediately their own. Of course, most hoped to catch a glimpse of the famous Aldradan Mikmir, and the legend’s absence fueled some disgruntled talk. Why would the King abandon his city in its time of need?

Gerand kept to the standard explanation: the King was traveling to drum up more support and had no doubt been hindered by the dangerous paths he was forced to tread. It held up for the most part, but if the leaders ever put their heads together and discussed it, they might find that Aldradan Mikmir had bidden no one come; messengers had spread the word, and the Regents and soldiers of Mikmir had answered the call of their missing monarch.

To Gerand’s left, Baron Rikken sat staring into the dirty sky, the skin around his blue eyes lined from his many hours out in the sun. His bronze and silver breastplate held the device of a bear. The man was built straight and tall and had the look of old leather. Gerand was glad to have him. He was an experienced soldier who had won much honor during the war with Aughmere when King Filingrail withdrew from the Fildelium.

But even more soothing to Gerand was Maewen, who stood at his right, also peering into the sky but with her head slightly cocked. Why she had chosen to fight alongside him instead of General Harband or anyone else was a mystery to Gerand, but he wouldn’t complain. On her back, her quiver brimmed with long arrows crafted after the elven fashion, and her hands were on the hilts of her curved long knives.

“What is it?” Gerand asked.

She waited, silent for a few moments. Baron Rikken leaned over, listening.

“It will begin soon,” she said. “I hear their voices on the wind.”

“Whose?” Gerand asked.

“The fell shrieks of Sethra Dhron. Get them up and ready. The vanguard will be upon us soon.”

Gerand gave the signal to the herald, and he blew the call to arms, his men scrambling from alleys and houses to gather to the street. A single knight bearing the white hammer device of the Torunnes rode up from the next street over and approached.

“General Torunne asks why you have sounded the call to arms?”

“Sethra Dhron is nearly here,” Gerand explained. “Get your men ready.”

“We have seen no threat.”

“You will hear it first,” Maewen said. “Your poor ears could hear it now if you would quiet yourselves. The cry of the birds is heavy on the air.”

Gerand signaled for silence, and the rider waited. For several moments, only the sound of the wind whipping along the street rewarded their attention, but just as everyone started to relax, the horrifying shriek of the fell birds carried over the wall and into their ears. It sounded like the cries of a hundred girls screaming in pain. No more explanation was needed, and the rider galloped away while the men and horses formed their lines.