The Last Talisman (20 page)

Thankfully, Nihal's sharp senses saved them. All of a sudden, she was woken by a vague perception of danger. She drew her sword in a flash and shook Sennar awake.

“What is it?” he asked, yawning.

“I'm not sure,” the half-elf answered. She pricked her ears. “Do you have your powers back?”

“Not completely, but I think I can manage one or two trusty attack spells,” the sorcerer answered.

Nihal leaped to her feet. “Run!” she shrieked, and the two took off at a sprint.

The enemies burst into the open, their howls and clattering footsteps echoing through the forest. Nihal had no time to count them all, but she could make out at least three distinct voices and the sound of footsteps coming from four directions.

She caught up to Sennar and grabbed his hand. She wasn't going to lose him, not this time. Breathless, directionless they ran. But every path they chose seemed obstructed with thick clusters of bushes. However many there were, the enemies were Fammin, Nihal could sense it. And she was terrified by the thought of having to fight them, of having to kill yet again.

Their shouting and stamping grew closer and closer. Nihal felt something grip her ankle. She lost hold of Sennar's hand and fell to the ground. Sennar stopped short, just in time to see one of the Fammin wielding an axe over Nihal. But Nihal was too quick. She flung herself around, drew her sword, and pierced her enemy before the axe blade could strike. The Fammin crumpled sideways. Nihal sprang back to her feet. They were off again, sprinting.

“How far do you think we are from the entrance to the underground water storage system of the Land of Fire?” Sennar asked as he ran.

An arrow whizzed past just above their heads. In a split-second reaction, Nihal conjured a thin force field, just enough to provide minimal protection. “A mile or two, maybe,” she answered, breathing heavily.

“We'll never make it. …”

The ground beneath them suddenly descended into a steep slope and the two went tumbling down. Nihal managed to catch hold of a thick root, grabbing Sennar as well. They could hear the sound of footsteps approaching above them.

“I can try …” Sennar muttered through gritted teeth.

“Try what?” Nihal gasped.

“The Flying Spell,” the sorcerer answered.

“Can you do it?”

“We don't have much of a choice. I'll need to concentrate on the border between the two Lands and the spot you pointed to on the map.”

Sennar squeezed his eyes shut. The footsteps grew closer, the howling more insistent. He recited the spell, and in an instant they vanished.

When they reappeared, a torrent of light flooded the landscape—a desert plain, not a trace of plant life. After days and days of complete darkness, the sunlight was blinding.

Nihal was the first to lift her eyelids. She turned and saw the forest behind them, almost a hundred feet back. She could hear Sennar panting at her side.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

The sorcerer caught his breath. “I'm alright for now, but that's the last of my magic for today.”

“We're still not far enough away. We have to keep moving.” Nihal stood, pulling Sennar to his feet.

They took off running again. It was even more dangerous here than where they'd just been. There were no obstacles, nothing to hide behind, just flat, parched land. They were easy targets.

“I would have done better, but I couldn't remember the exact location and I'm not familiar with the area,” Sennar apologized, breathless.

“At least we got away from there!” Nihal shouted back.

The wells leading down into the underground canals couldn't have been too far off, but everywhere Nihal looked, objects blurred in the unbearable light and disappeared in a burst of heat. But then she noticed something take shape on the horizon—dense black clouds, towering mountains. Sennar limped along behind her.

“How much longer?” the sorcerer asked.

“I don't have the slightest idea,” Nihal blurted, gasping for air.

Suddenly, the ground opened up beneath her feet. She fell through, Sennar beside her, and the two plunged down into the dark. The last thing she felt was a sharp pang in the top of her skull, and then: nothing.

The Descent

In the city of rock, all things are the color of the mountain. Here, more than anywhere else, one may stand back and admire the ingenuity and magnificence of the dwarves' art. Merry cries of festivity and the joyous shrieks of children fill the street, and each day at noon, the king sounds a bell, its clear tone ringing out to every corner of the city.

Geography of the Overworld
, paragraph XXXVII,

from the Royal Library of Makrat

21

Ido's Warriors

Ido and his students arrived at the camp in a week's time, only to discover that the front had been pushed back even farther. As expected, the young warriors were shaken. The blood, the wounded soldiers, the mounds of corpses, the swords blunted from overuse, the terror … all things that were unimaginable from within the protective cocoon of the Academy.

“This is war, the filthy mess that you all took for some elegant fencing match while you were in the Academy. There are no rules on the battlefield; there's no such thing as integrity. There's life and there's death. Let go of honor, banish all memory of your training manuals, but never forget what you've come here to fight for. Fix it in your minds,” he said to his students, as they stared back at him with petrified gazes.

He even took his platoon on a tour of the nearby villages, through the heaps of smoking rubble and rotting corpses. He forced them to witness the despair of the survivors, the orphans, the widows, the vacant gazes of those who'd lost everything.

Some averted their eyes. Some, late at night, sobbed in their tents. It was right. It was the only way. A warrior unmoved by the horrors of war and injustice would never be a true warrior.

Ido was rough and emotionless when he saw one of his youngest students in tears. “Don't cry. Reflect. Fill your heart with what you see. Let it invade you, demand understanding. Once you've reflected, ask yourselves what you can do to keep it from happening again. Then you'll understand that a soldier doesn't pick up a sword because his father placed it in his hand before he could even walk, or to prove himself stronger than the rest, or to impress a girl, but for a far nobler cause.”

Ido was trying to instill in his students all that he'd learned from his long years of warring, and the effort filled him with purpose. It wasn't a simple matter of training soldiers, but one of forming men—men who would one day serve as protectors of peace in the world, if it ever did come.

Perhaps I need to do this more often. Perhaps I need to take on more students
, he found himself thinking one day, surprised the thought would even cross his mind. Though perhaps he shouldn't have been surprised—wouldn't it, after all, be one more way to atone for the mistakes of his past?

Then came the hour of battlefield training, of every-man-for-himself combat. They needed to understand what it felt like to have enemies pouring in from all directions. Ido was nothing if not a rigorous instructor. He required the same commitment and dedication that he required of himself from his students. Between the constant combat training and strategy lessons, he wore them down to their last nerves. “The life of the warrior is not a life of rest and relaxation,” he'd say whenever a student complained.

Meanwhile, as he carried out his training, Ido kept busy with the last stages of battle preparation. Spring was coming to a close and the planned day of attack was approaching. Several strategy meetings were held, and Ido, along with his group of four hundred soldiers, including the young students from the Academy, had been assigned to the front line. All those who were aspiring knights and capable of mounting a dragon were, instead, to help fend off the fire-breathing birds. In those final days before battle, mayhem seized the camp, a chaotic tangle of preparations, punctuated by the shrill cries of dragons gathered by the dozens in the stables.

When Ido informed his students of their assignment and the date of attack, he could see fear run through the line of boys.

“We're not even true warriors,” one of them protested.

“That's where you're wrong,” Ido replied. “The training I've given you is more than sufficient, and add to that your experience at the Academy.”

“That may be true, but the front line is still the front line,” another student chimed in.

“Which is why we put you through such a rigorous selection and training process. You're no common soldiers, never forget that.” Ido ran his gaze down the line of timid faces. “Never let yourselves be conquered by fear. When you entered the Academy, you all made a choice. You chose to put your lives on the line for a cause. And right now, in this moment, you must face the reality of that choice and pay the price. Fear is a normal reaction. An authentic reaction. It proves one's love for life. One must love life dearly in this career. But you must conquer fear. Together, all of you form a single body. Just as in life, the death of one allows the others to go on. Don't forget that. Don't fight in vain. When all's said and done, each and every one of you has what it takes to stay alive out there.”

Time raced on. The chill spring faded gradually into the first hot summer afternoons, and the day of the battle arrived at last.

The camp was a swarming sea of men and weaponry. At dawn's first light, a stir of orders and instructions rose up among the tents while dragons sped from one end of the encampment to the other.

Ido was up early, his stomach in knots. The approach of battle rarely got to him like this, or hadn't, at least, since he was a young boy and still fighting for the Tyrant. He cast off the foolish thought and crept out of bed.

The air was electric. It was shaping up to be a massive battle, and everyone could feel it.

When Ido reached his students, they were already awake and jittery.

“I understand your anxiety, but you have to keep calm. Banish all thought of death, of anything that's a distraction from the real task in front of you: the battle. All that exist now are your sword and the enemy, nothing else. Empty your minds and focus on your legs, your arms, the movements of your body. Don't let fear or the high of killing overtake you. Remember why you're stepping onto the battlefield today.”

The young men nodded—one hundred and twenty faces, hanging on the dwarf's every word.

Ido was short a squire after Laio's departure, so he called in one of his students for help—Caver, the blonde boy he'd picked to duel in the second round of selections. After Caver left, Ido lingered in his tent, polishing his sword. It was something he did before every battle, to settle his mind and regain his focus.

Since Soana's enchantment, Ido's weapon had taken on an opaque transparency. It seemed lighter than before and glowed darkly in the dim tent. He ran a cloth up and down the blade, but the steady ritual did nothing to calm his nerves. Deep in his heart, he felt a rock-hard anxiety, and in some ways, the feeling reminded him of his bloodthirsty mania for battle back during his days fighting among the Tyrant's troops.

Even when he reached Vesa, the mood persisted. Both dragon and knight were gripped with disquietude.

“We're getting old, aren't we?” said Ido, running his hand over the dragon's red scales. “There was a time when all we had to do was meet eyes and our nerves would vanish, wasn't there old boy?”

The dragon snorted, and Ido lingered at his side for a moment, just long enough to take a deep breath and turn his concentration to the battle ahead.

It took over an hour to get the whole company in order, and Ido used the time to lift his soldiers' spirits and arrange them according to their individual strengths. Ido recognized more than a few faces among the ranks. Soana was swaying in a trance, busy applying magic to several swords at once, with a platoon of sorcerers behind her. Farther down the line, he spotted Mavern, who'd been placed at the head of the young Dragon Knights. Nearby was Nelgar, the general in charge of the troops that day. But what Ido saw next was an unusual sight.

It was a warrior he didn't recognize, seated atop an imposing, copper-colored horse. He wore finely wrought, light-blue armor and carried a long, lavishly decorated sword. When the soldier lifted his visor, Ido was pained by the sight of a familiar face. Thick, brown curls, a candid, boyish expression: It was Galla.

He thought the issue had long been resolved. During one of the last meetings, Galla had stood and asked to fight alongside the troops.

“My wife died for this kingdom, and what have I done but strategize from the safety of my royal palace? Meanwhile, the people of my land are dying. I won't just stand here with my hands at my side,” he'd protested.

Everyone knew that Galla hadn't been the same since the death of his wife. He loved her deeply, and to have seen her vanish like that, zapped out of thin air by Deinforo's lance on the day they'd first battled the army of the dead—the sight had wrecked him.

“Your Majesty, I beg your pardon, but you're no warrior, and your people are counting on your leadership. It's not right to take such a risk,” Mavern had argued, trying to talk some sense into him.

“And if my land falls? Then what happens? I must stand by my people.”

The meeting drew to an end and still no one had been able to dissuade him. But Ido was under the impression that in the following days, Theris, the nymph who represented the Land of Water on the Council of Sorcerers, had been able to make him see reason.

“Believe me, we tried.”

Ido spun to his right. Nelgar was standing beside him.

“He was adamant,” the base commander added.

Ido sighed. “In certain ways, I understand his decision. It's a noble gesture, to want to share the fate of your people, but an idiotic one, too. He's just asking to die.”

“There's nothing to do at this point but let him live out his fate. There's no question he will fight in today's battle. Let's just hope he survives; we'll do everything we can to protect him.”

As dawn faded, the army was fully arrayed. A leaden sky loomed above them, rain trickling from the dark clouds. The tap of raindrops against canvas and metal echoed through the encampment.

Ido breathed in deeply. Stretched before them, the enemy was a sea of gray, dotted here and there with the black of Dragon Knights. One, two … three. Three knights. At least the battle would be even in that respect. From where they stood, the dwarf could still recognize Deinforo, his armor gleaming fire red. He stood at the fore, in command of the enemy forces.

Ido gazed farther into the distance: hundreds of jostling Fammin, and behind them the fire-breathing birds, their shrill caws splitting the gray morning sky. Finally, the ghosts brought up the rear. Hordes of them, as usual. Ido averted his eyes quickly. There would never be enough time to grow accustomed to the sight. Such horror was incomprehensible.

He shouted a ready command and drew his sword. As the blade slipped from its sheath, a sudden calm took hold of his limbs.

Finally.

The Fammin raised their war cry. A few of the young soldiers behind Ido fidgeted in their heavy armor.

“It's all an act. Don't let it fool you,” he called back, trying to ease their nerves.

A dense silence took hold. It was always that way—an infinite silence, and with it a thousand swarming thoughts. Of life, of death, of friends, of lovers … though in Ido's mind there was room only for a glare of fire red.

Then came the order to attack, and the battle was on.