Sword of Dreams (The Reforged Trilogy) (50 page)

Black robed cultists leapt at Kemmer. They had guns, too, and the bullets slammed Kemmer in the chest like hammer blows. A laser burned down his side, exposing the bone of his hip and filling the air with the sharp, acrid scent of burnt flesh. Kemmer's legs could no longer support him and he fell. The gun spun away across the slick white stairs.

The black-haired Arcadian spread her wings and glided down to stand before Kemmer, looking down at him with startling violet eyes. He struggled to rise, but he could not move his heavy, limp limbs from the spreading puddle of steaming blood. Cold rain splashed his face, every drop heavy as lead. The fairy reached into one flowing white sleeve and produced a long, slender glass dagger. It gleamed like ice.

"You discovered this Waygate," she said in a musical voice. "You have saved me a great deal of work and for that, I thank you."

With an effort that brought tears to his eyes, Kemmer grabbed for the fairy's knife. She smiled, perhaps pleased at his tenacity, and pushed Kemmer's hands easily back down to the blood-streaked Waygate stairs. She drew the glass knife across his throat. As his life drained away, the last thing Kemmer Andus saw was his Waygate glowing with cold auroral light.

________

Gavriel faced Tiberius across the field of ice and mist. To judge by the screams and gunshots echoing up from the ravine, Xartasia was leading the Nihilists successfully to the Waygate. All that remained was to deal with this… thief.

Gavriel raised his arms. The wind billowed his ancient robes and raked across his sallow skin. "Where is the boy?" he asked.

Tiberius stood steady and unmovable as a mountain. "Duaal. His name is Duaal. He's not your tool and he's not a boy. Duaal's a fine man – in spite of you!"

"In spite of?" Gavriel laughed. "I gave that boy the only taste of power that he will ever know."

"You tormented him! You used him!"

Gavriel flexed his long, spidery fingers. The knuckles cracked like snapping twigs. "And what have you done for the boy? What kind of life have you given him? Even you speak of his pain. If you truly cared for the boy, you would kill him and save him the torment of life. When I have called forth the Devourers, I will finish what you lack the strength to do."

Tiberius' face went suddenly white as the snow. "You'll never hurt Duaal again!"

"That is no longer your concern," Gavriel said coldly. He laced his creaking fingers together and brandished them.
"Ka li'ae avael baelenox!"

"Fly!" Tiberius shouted to his hawk at the same time.

A bright line of flame sizzled through the rain as the hook-beaked bird streaked toward Gavriel. Tiberius lunged to the side and fired, but the bullet cracked off into the pewter clouds over Gavriel's shoulder.

With a song and a flick of Gavriel's wrist, another red-gold lance of fire lit up the storm. It seared through Tiberius' ribs, burning a smoking black hole through cloth and flesh. The old Prian's jaw clenched and he brought up his gun to bear on Gavriel.

"Na illya ma'naari su!"
the old mage sang.

Lightning arced and snapped across Tiberius' gun. His fingers spasmed helplessly and the weapon fell steaming into the snow. Gavriel smiled and raised his hands again, but a dark shape shot from the sky.

It was the hawk, screeching and diving with talons extended. Gavriel flung his arms across his face as the hawk clawed at him. Pain exploded in his left eye and the world filled with wet red agony. Gavriel grabbed the bird and flung her away. Her talons gleamed with blood and clutched rags of torn skin.

Gavriel shouted another lightning spell and filled the fog with harsh blue-white light. But the hawk was gone, vanished once more into the dark storm clouds. Gavriel turned back to Tiberius.

The Prian lay sprawled in the snow. His breath came quick and shallow. Sky blue eyes stared accusingly up into the heavens, unyieldingly hard. Gavriel stood over the dying Prian.

"You were brave, Tiberius Myles," he said soothingly. "But darkness is coming. Soon, the boy will join you in death."

Gavriel stepped over Tiberius and strode to the edge of the ravine. Nihilists were busily reattaching the ladder to steel pegs in the stone. Those who had not climbed down into the narrow crack bowed and made way for Gavriel. They gasped, pointing to his wounded face and useless left eye.

"Lord Gavriel, are you all right?" asked one of them.

Gavriel waved him off. The pain blazed, but he had endured worse and there was too much to do. "It will not matter for long," he said. "When night falls tonight, it falls across the entire galaxy!"

Behind him, the hawk landed beside Tiberius. She hopped closer to her fallen master and nuzzled his shoulder, keening pitifully.

"The ready student will find himself a teacher, even in the man who does not wish to teach."

- Desson Felix, Orin author (198 PA)

"Advent in sixty!" Captain Cerro shouted.

The tight confines of the van suddenly became even tighter as five other cops jostled, freeing weapons and unhooding birds.

Maeve inspected herself. There was still blood crusted unpleasantly at the shorn edges of her ruined clothes, but Xia's drugs had done their job admirably. She would be able to fight.

Xia sprayed an astringent-smelling adhesive onto the fairy's broken foot and dabbed it with powder from a small box. The glue flared with chemical heat and set into a stiff, surprisingly resilient shell.

"Now, take it easy," she warned. "This cast is good enough for light protection, but I don't know how well it's going to hold up under stress."

"It will serve," said Maeve. "Thank you."

"You're medicated, but just because you don't feel the pain doesn't mean the injuries are gone. Gavriel and his butcher did a lot of damage. There's the Vanora White to consider, too," Xia reminded her while she worked. "I don't know how much of it is still in your system. I would have liked to give you dylominol. It's safer when there are other chems in your system. But with this many injuries, I had to give you isophelle. If you start getting sleepy, you need to tell me."

"We have far worse concerns than medicines," Maeve said in a tight, unhappy voice. Her mistake at Tamlin not only destroyed the White Kingdom, but unless they could stop the Nihilists, would now kill trillions. Though the Alliance never welcomed the refugee Arcadians, Maeve had no desire to see another civilization wiped out.

And I do not want us to be the first losses,
she thought.
I… I do not want to die. Not here in the gray cold, at the fangs and black blades of the Devourers. Let me see the sun again! Any sun…

Her thoughts were interrupted by a sudden pained scream from Duaal. In spite of the close confines, the young mage leapt to his feet. The crown of his skull smashed into the well-worn ceiling. But when Duaal fell to his knees, clutching his head and tears streaming down his cheeks, it did not seem to be from the pain.

"Duaal?" Xia abandoned Maeve and grabbed Duaal by the shoulder. "What's wrong?"

"Tiberius!" the boy howled in heart-breaking agony.

"What the hells?" Cerro asked, alarmed. He put a heavy, reassuring hand on his nervously twitching falcon. "What's wrong with him?"

"Shimmer's connected to Gavriel," Gripper explained hastily. "Did you see something, Shimmer?"

"Gavriel… he burned down the captain!" Duaal wept.

Cerro's scarred face was sad, but he leaned over to the tiny, battle-scarred window. "We're here!" he announced loudly. He spoke into the radio clipped to his shoulder. "Keep close and move fast. Our goal is the Waygate. Punch through and hold it. Go!"

"We've got to get to Tiberius!" Duaal cried over the clamor. "Find him!"

Everyone nodded in agreement, even Logan. They were at the road's end, at the bottom of the rising moraine. The police van swerved and screeched to a stop beside a huge, empty hauler. Cerro shouted and kicked open the doors, flinging his falcon up into the gray fog. Thirty more cops poured out of the vans, some sending other hook-taloned birds winging out into the mist and all with guns held at the ready.

"Tiberius!"

Maeve heard Duaal's cry before she could follow him out onto the mountaintop. She jumped out of the van and past the cops, dropping her spear as she fell to her knees beside her captain. Xia and Gripper were close behind, followed only slightly more distantly by Logan. Duaal skidded through the snow to kneel beside Tiberius, who lay in a spreading halo of red. There was another long line of blood in the snow behind him, leading back toward the ravine.

"Tiberius? Can you hear me?" Xia said.

A terrible burn cut deeply into the old Prian's chest. His right hand lay curled and blackened over the wound. Blood streaked his beard, but his blue eyes were open. Orphia perched on his boot, keening piteously and pulling at the laces with her beak. Tiberius looked up at Cerro and managed a small nod.

"Captain," he wheezed.

Cerro inclined his head. "Captain," he greeted the other man gravely.

"Behind you…"

A wild-eyed man ran screaming out of the mist, holding a hatchet over his head and charged at Cerro. The cop brought up his blocky Talon-4 and put a lance of red laser through the Nihilist's knee. The zealot's scream rose in pitch and pain as he tumbled down into the slush. Another Prian officer holding a shotgun at his hip rushed forward and cracked the stock against the back of the cultist's head.

"Attention members of the Cult of Nihil," Captain Cerro said into his radio. His voice boomed from speakers bolted to the sides of the green and red vans. "You are all under arrest! If you lay down arms, you will be taken to Pylos Station Three to await trial. You–"

Shrill shrieks of fury rang out through the gloom. Shadows loomed up all around, closing quickly. Stones flew out of the fog at the police piling out of the vans, and then the Nihilist opened fire.

"Spread out! Make any arrests you can, but we're not here for tea! We're going to stop this. Now fly!" Cerro called out. Twenty-nine cops fanned out around him and charged into the mist.

Duaal had taken Tiberius' uninjured hand and held it in both of his. Tears shined on his cheeks as he stared at Xia. "You can help him, right?"

Tiberius shook his head weakly. "There's no fixing this." He coughed, blood bubbling up from his mouth. "He's down there, at the Waygate!"

Duaal's face paled and his jaw set in a hard line.

"You have to stop Gavriel," Tiberius said.

"He is right," Maeve agreed quietly. Her voice caught. "I am a knight and know only a handful of basic charms. You are the only true spellsinger among us, Duaal. We must go."

Tiberius pulled his hand free and pushed at the boy's shoulder. He left a bloody handprint on Duaal's coat. "Don't waste time! Go!"

Duaal's eyes opened and he took a deep, cold breath. He stood and pushed his wet hair back from his face. "Xia, do what you can for the captain. Stay with her, Gripper."

The Arboran sobbed and nodded. Rain dripped off his long, drooping ears. Panna had emerged from the van and stood staring, wide-eyed and hands pressed to her mouth in horror.

"You stay, too," Duaal told her. "All four of you should get into one of these vans and lock the doors."

The high whine of lasers and the flat cracks of lead rounds pierced the thin mountain air. Maeve grabbed her spear from where it had fallen in the snow. "They will manage," she said. "It is time for us join the battle."

The police were spread out in teams, moving forward in low crouches with weapons in hand. As the dark figures of Nihilists came running and stumbling down the slope, the Prians took careful aim and fired. The battle was punctuated by sharp whistles as the cops called out attack commands to circling hawks and falcons. It was almost musical. The sounds reminded Maeve of the battle songs she had learned from Orthain.

Maeve's glass spear caught the wan light and sliced it into rainbow shards. She sprinted a few steps through the snow after the police and leapt into the sky, but something caught her wrist and she was pulled back to the ground.

"What do you think you're doing?" Logan asked.

Maeve found herself facing her hunter. The icy gaze that she knew so well, that had protected her memories from Gavriel's spells – for a time, at least – was gone. Logan's eyes were wide and he looked frightened. His metal fingers were locked around her wrist.

"Release me, Logan! I must find Gavriel," Maeve cried. "It is my memory he wields!"

"There are two hundred psychotic Nihilists up here. If you fly out ahead of the police, you're only going to get yourself shot!" Logan's face resumed the cold mask. His fingers tightened on her arm. "You can't stop anyone if you're dead."

"I cannot remain and do nothing!"

"Then be smart," Logan said. "Let me go with you."

She nodded and pulled her wings close again. Maeve, Duaal and Logan ran to catch up with the cops. The human men could have easily overtaken her with their longer legs, but matched their strides to Maeve and remained close. They picked out the lighter blue of Cerro's uniform and ran toward it. The Prian police had not made much progress up the slope.