Venom and Song (62 page)

The area at the top of the mountain was clearing out . . . certainly of Elves who got the message. But even the enemy forces were evacuating. The Spider King struggled still against the weight upon his legs. Five Drefids remained with him, trying to pry the monstrous stone just enough for his legs to come free.

“Uh, I think we need to leave now, too,” said Jimmy, spitting out the rain that accumulated instantly when he opened his mouth. “It's about to get really bad.”

“Right,” said Tommy. “Johnny, Autumn, Kiri Lee—let's go!”

Rain pelted harder than ever, soaking them from head to foot. Every other step was a slip. Many of the Elves slid out of control for great distances until they slammed into enough of their countrymen to stop them.

When the lords reached the last few stairs to the arched window opening, water was running in a stream next to them. Half of it poured into the window, and the rest continued its journey down the mountain. Each of the lords spared more than a glance at that window, but Kiri Lee stopped.

“Kiri Lee!” Tommy called, his words whisked away by gulps of water. “What . . . what are you doing?”

“I'm not leaving Jett here!” she yelled back.

“Wha—no, Kiri Lee, you can't go back in there!” Tommy couldn't say any more from that distance. He grabbed Johnny by the arm. “Can you get any flame going in this?” he asked.

Johnny grinned. He held out his palm, and it instantly pooled with water—which flash boiled to steam and turned to a wild, flickering flame.

“Good,” said Tommy hurriedly. “Make yourself a hum—no, an Elven-torch and lead our people to safety!”

“Got it!” Johnny said, and flared the fire in his palm until it shone like a beacon. “Follow me! Follow me!” he yelled.

Kiri Lee had made up her mind, Tommy knew that before he went to her, but he had to try. If she wouldn't budge, then he knew what he had to do.

“Kiri Lee,” he said, taking her arm firmly, “if you go down there and this flood keeps up, you'll get washed out like a drowned rat.”

“I told you,” she said, “I'm not going to leave him here.”

“Then I'm going with you,” said Tommy, and he put a foot through the window. That was when Kiri Lee shocked him.

She placed both hands around his upper arm and lifted him bodily out of the window. She had air walked and lifted him up as well.

“There,” she said, putting him down as if he weighed nothing. “That's just in case you don't think I can carry him by myself.”

Tommy blinked and wiped the water out of his eyes. Then he tenderly put a hand on Kiri Lee's shoulder and softly said, “Bring him back, Kiri Lee. Bring Jett home.”

Tears and rain mixed, and Kiri Lee disappeared through the window.

As the streams increased in size and force, the Elves began to slow down.

“
KEEP RUNNING46”
Tommy screamed at the top of his lungs— lungs that burned with every step he took. He caught up to Kat and yelled to her, but the next thing he knew, they were both on their backs, sliding down the mountain. He grabbed her arm and she grabbed his as they hurtled forward. Elves fell one after the other, taken by the torrent and carried away.

Tommy tried to see what was ahead through the pelting sheets. He wished he hadn't. The central turret of Vesper Crag, a monolith of stone some two hundred feet wide, lay directly in their path. “Oh no!”

Kat lifted her head. “Oh no!”

It was too late to do anything.

Using recovered spears and shields, the Drefids managed to lift the stone slab. But the rain was at its most intense, howling and swirling, so heavy it was almost like being underwater.

The Drefids, whose bony hands were not good for much traction, couldn't see to keep the slab up long enough for the Spider King to escape. Time and again, one Drefid would lose his grip, and the stone would fall once more on his segmented legs. Then, with the Spider King roaring and threatening, the Drefids pried the stone up. The Spider King rolled his body to get his legs free. He tried to stand, but two legs were ruined. The third on that side was cracked and oozing green fluid.

That was when the Spider King turned on the Drefids.

“You promised me!” he hissed.

Four of the Drefids began to back away. One stood his ground. “But it was you who broke our agreement! You should never have taken an Elf for a wife!”

The Spider King roared. “Backstabbing liars! If you'd killed them at the sacking of Berinfell—”

“Don't blame us!” the Drefid screamed back. “You should have feared our master above that ignorant curse.”

The Spider King lashed out with all the power he had, pushing off with his good legs and slamming into the Drefids. He caught the nearest Drefid by the neck and sheared off its head. The other three he crushed against his body and let them fall away into the coursing streams of gray.

But when the Spider King tried to stand, he found that he'd completely snapped his third leg. And with the pouring, coursing rain, he could not gain any stability at all. His eyes flashed with rage and he pulsed webbing from his shoulder spinnerets, but these sopping threads would not adhere to the slick stone. Using his arms and his good legs, he tried once more, achieving a brief awkward stance. But the force of the wind and rain drove him over onto his back, and he began to slide down the incline . . . and into the main current.

The flood took Tommy and Kat on a hasty loop around the building and over a sudden lip. They felt weightless for a moment, hit a deep pocket of water, and were submerged for a time before bobbing back to the surface. Slowly, they floated out into a shallow lake of incomparable murk. At last Tommy felt the ground under his feet and helped Kat to her feet. Disoriented and exhausted, they looked about for direction.

“Johnny's fire!” Tommy yelled. “Thank Ellos for that light. Come on, Kat!”

Dozens of Elves were climbing up out of the muck, and Tommy yelled to them, “Seek the flame! Follow the light!”

Kat tried to tell them through thoughts as well, but she was so terribly exhausted that she could barely stand. She grabbed Tommy's arm, and he supported her. On and on they pressed, faster and faster. Utter fatigue was setting in, and Tommy was practically dragging Kat through the thigh-deep water. “COME ON, KAT! HANG IN THERE!”

Kat coughed, pulling herself up by his arm. Her legs were just too tired.

When he was sure he couldn't take another step, he noticed the ground pitching upward.
AH!
he thought.
Almost there!
The revelation brought on a final burst of energy, and the young lords strode out of the flood and, before too long, made their way up the flowing face of the western bank. At last they made it to the top of the command hill, and there they were met by a horde of Elves welcoming them to safety.

But Grimwarden broke through them all. “Lord Felheart!” he said. “Thank Ellos you're alive!”

Tommy was about to say he was glad to see Grimwarden when the Guardmaster grabbed him by the shoulder, “I need your eyes!”

He practically dragged Tommy to the highest point on the hill. “Hurry!” he said. “With the storm, we lost sight of the Spider King.”

“But this rain,” said Tommy. “It was supposed to kill him, right?”

“I hope so,” he replied. “But that is the kind of thing we must know for certain. Now look at the top of the hill. Is he there?”

Tommy had a hard time finding an anchor for his vision to pull in. The vague outline of the mountain peak would have to do. His eyes flew through the storm, higher and higher to the peak. “He's not there! Wait . . . wait, I see him! He's caught in the current, sliding. He's out of control, crashing into things. He looks dead.”

Tommy watched the Spider King's body rolling and floating until it was about halfway down.

“Ah!” exclaimed Grimwarden. “I see him now!” Together, they watched him careen the rest of the way. He smacked hard into a massive chunk of a fallen tower that teetered on the edge of a waterfall. The body slid off the edge and fell some fifty feet into a waiting pool below. Then the tower, all twenty feet of stone, rolled over the edge and plummeted into the pool.

“That,” said Grimwarden, his voice quavering, “is the end of the Spider King.”

“Any sign?” Autumn asked Tommy.

“No,” he replied.

“She'll make it,” said Autumn.

Bloodied and caked with ash, Ethon Beleron appeared and said, “If your Kiri Lee survived that crash near the wall, she can make it back through this deluge.”

“She better,” whispered Tommy.

Even on high ground, the water flowed past their ankles, speeding toward lower ground. A stiffening chill set in. Johnny hugged Autumn, her teeth chattering. And before Tommy could move, Kat had stepped into his chest, arms tucked up, body trembling. Tommy, slightly startled, felt awkward enveloping her in his arms. But soon he knew she needed him. Maybe for more than just warmth.

The army of Berinfell stood there, motionless, prisoner of the rain that they themselves had called down. Long seconds stretched into minutes, and minutes stretched into an hour. Not once did a Gwar rise up the hill from the field, nor a Warspider to so much as taunt them. The endless clash of metal on metal, or stone on flesh, had ceased. Now all they heard was rain.

Just rain. How long it went on, no one quite knew. But one pervading thought was shared by every Elf who had endured the storm: it was a miracle.

Many rested, some leaning on their spears, some with heads on the shoulders of those beside them. But the cold that set in kept any from falling asleep.

Tommy had drifted into a kind of exhausted trance when a crowd of Elves began to gather nearby. Neither he nor Kat looked up as Kiri Lee stepped down out of the air and placed her friend into the arms of her people.

44
A New Dawn

THE ENTIRE Elven army stood on the west bank as the morning sun broke through the clouds on the eastern horizon. Just the sight of it was life-giving for many of the Elves who had been wounded in battle or nearly drowned in the great flood. For the first time in a long time, the sun shone bright over Vesper Crag, housed in a brilliant blue sky-bowl.