The keep of fire, p.30
The Keep of Fire, page 30
And how are we going to get past even five of them? Grace tried to say. But the parched air had fused her throat shut.
They wheeled their mounts around and pounded over to the Tolorian side of the bridge. The horses snorted and rolled their eyes; the beasts smelled fire.
“I’m afraid,” Daynen said, his voice warbling.
Lirith circled her arms around the boy and held him close.
The five krondrim on the east side had continued their approach. They were thirty yards from the bridge now and closing, setting the grass ablaze wherever they stepped.
Beltan swung his legs over his charger’s back and hit the ground with a dissonant ringing of chain mail. “Everyone, get off your horses. It’s going to be hard to control them when those things get close.”
Durge reached up and drew his greatsword from the sheath on his back. Colorless light reflected by the river shone off the flat of the blade, and its edge was stained with crimson. “My lady,” he said to Grace. “You and the others must stay behind us. Be sure to keep the children with you.”
Grace gave a wordless nod.
They left the horses in a knot to the right side of the bridge. Grace, Aryn, and Lirith stood in the place where stone met turf, Daynen and Tira in their midst, while the three knights fanned out in front, swords raised. Grace watched the lines of fire draw closer and wished Melia were here. On Midwinter’s Eve, the amber-eyed lady had managed to hold dozens of snarling feydrim at bay in the great hall of Calavere. If only Grace had such power.
But don’t you have power, Grace? Maybe it’s not like Melia’s. But you were able to conjure a wind in Falanor, enough to move fog, at any rate.
However, she didn’t know what good that did her. It was going to take more than a breeze to hold the krondrim back. The Burnt Ones were ten paces away now. Five. Still, Grace could make out no distinguishing features: only the sharp outlines of their bodies, so dark she saw them as holes in the gloom.
“Get ready,” Beltan said to the other knights. “And whatever you do, don’t let them touch you.”
Durge and Meridar tightened their grips on their swords. The krondrim covered the last remaining distance and reached out sooty hands. Heat rolled off of them in choking waves.
Durge’s sword was the longest, and he struck first, a powerful blow aimed at the center of the nearest creature’s body. There was a harsh clanging, as of metal on stone. Both Durge and the krondrim stumbled back. The Embarran recovered, then raised his sword again. The tip of the blade glowed a dull red, as if it had just been pulled from the coals of a forge, then dimmed as it cooled again. The Burnt One staggered, then started forward once more.
Two other krondrim closed in, and—like Durge—Beltan and Meridar were able to beat them back with their swords. However, the blades did not seem to harm the creatures. Their skin was like rock hardened from lava. The Burnt Ones moved forward again, joined now by the rest of their kindred.
In ones and twos the krondrim lurched toward the foot of the bridge, only to fall back under the onslaught of the knights. Sweat poured down the faces of the men, and they shifted their grips constantly against the hilts of their hot swords. How long could the knights stand the furnace? And how long would the krondrim attack only one or two at a time?
A puff of hot, gritty air struck Grace’s face, and tears ran from her stinging eyes. She blinked the tears back—
—and saw Tira walking away from her.
“Tira!” she hissed, snatching out her hands to clutch the girl. She was too slow. Tira started forward, in the direction of the battle, and Grace let out a strangled scream. Then the girl turned, dodged the stamping legs of the terrified horses, and squatted beside the bank of the river, just to the right of the bridge. Small waves lapped at her bare toes. She pulled her charred doll from her smock, dipped it into the water, and looked back in Grace’s direction.
Grace stared, paralyzed. What was the girl doing? Then Tira submerged the doll again, and Grace understood.
“The water!” she shouted to the knights. “We have to get them into the water. It’s the only way to harm them.”
None of the men looked her way, but a grunt from Durge let her know he had heard. He started to back away, toward the strip of shore just left of the bridge, opposite Tira and the horses. Beltan and Meridar followed, as did the krondrim. Tira dashed back to Grace’s arms. Grace gripped the girl tightly, then pushed her behind Lirith and Aryn, up onto the bridge. How the girl had known what to do was a mystery that would have to wait for later.
“Stay here,” she said to Tira. “You too, Daynen.” She nudged both boy and girl a dozen paces up the bridge. Daynen’s face was a mask of fear as he found Tira with blind hands and held her close. Grace turned and moved back down to the other women, at the foot of the bridge.
“Come!” Meridar hissed. Flames reflected off his eyes. “See if you can melt this blade before it cuts you in two!”
He shook his sword at the Burnt Ones. Blisters dotted his face. The knights’ armor gleamed in the light of small grassfires, and Grace knew they were baking inside the metal.
“Keep moving them toward the water!” Beltan called.
Durge grunted in assent. The knights kept falling back and left, and the krondrim staggered after them. Five feet from the river, now three, now one. The heels of Beltan’s boots touched the waves washing up on the bank.
The Burnt Ones stopped.
The knights moved back another pace, letting the water rise up to their knees. The krondrim milled back and forth on the shore, reaching onyx hands toward the men. But they did not step into the water.
Grace saw it—the flaw in their plan. Water had the power to harm them. And that meant the Burnt Ones would never follow the knights into the river. Hot tears blurred her vision.
“Grace.”
Lirith’s voice was soft, but somehow it cut through the smoke and despair that dulled her mind.
“Grace, look.”
There was a muffled gasp beside her. Aryn. With her fingers, Grace wiped her eyes clear. Unwilling to tread into the river, the krondrim had turned away from the shore. Now they walked in a new direction—one, thanks to Grace’s plan, no longer blocked by the knights or their swords.
“Grace!” Aryn’s voice was a hoarse whisper. “What do we do?”
Grace hesitated, then reached out and took the hands of the others into her own. Lirith gave a solemn nod, and Aryn squeezed back tightly. Together the three women watched as the Burnt Ones shambled toward them.
45.
With a great frothing, the knights pounded out of the river and onto the shore. However, the water held them back, slowing their action. The krondrim were well away from them—and only a matter of feet from the foot of the bridge.
Grace glanced over her shoulder at the children who stood on the bridge twenty feet behind her. “Daynen, stay put. And hold on to Tira. Do you understand me?”
He nodded, his blind eyes wide, and tightened his grip on Tira’s shoulders. Grace turned back, and a searing wave of heat struck her in the face. She willed her legs into columns. If she could delay the Burnt Ones, even for a few seconds, the knights might have time to save the children.
And how will you accomplish that, Grace?
But she already knew the answer to that question. For all its frailty, flesh was not so easily consumed. Even the white-hot fires of the crematorium at the hospital took time to reduce a body to ashes.
A shout rose above the crackling of burning grass. “Adagar! Lunge!”
At the call, one of the horses reared onto its hind legs: Meridar’s charger. The charger let out a trumpeting call, its muzzle wet with foam and the whites of its eyes showing. However, such was its training that the warhorse heeded the command of its master. It burst from the knot of horses and charged directly into the line of approaching krondrim. Hooves crashed down, striking sparks against hard flesh. Several of the Burnt Ones tumbled to the ground—then clambered to their feet again. Black hands reached out to stroke glossy flanks.
The charger screamed: a squealing, impossibly high-pitched sound that shredded Grace’s nerves. The horse crashed to the ground, legs flailing, as the flames engulfed it far more swiftly than she had thought possible. She heard oaths from the knights, but they were lost in another animal shriek. Then the sound ended as the horse’s legs went stiff. The krondrim moved past the smoking carcass, continuing on their path toward the bridge.
Now, at last, the beings were close enough for Grace to make out details of their features. In a way they still seemed human. Here and there lumps suggested noses, chins, breasts. Their skin was smooth and textureless, like volcanic glass, but lined with a webwork of cracks through which a dim, red luminescence welled like blood.
Durge and Beltan labored after the creatures, swords before them. Meridar followed just on their heels. However, Grace knew the men would not make it in time. She gazed into eyes like black stones: hard, reflective, and utterly dead.
Next to her, Aryn whispered a prayer to the goddess Yrsaia. Lirith chanted something as well: Grace caught the word Sia once, then again. She opened her own mouth, but what words could she speak? What god could she pray to? If she believed in one, she would have asked it to part the river, to raise the water into the sky, then have it come crashing down on those who would pursue and slay. But she did not believe.
Then you do it, Grace. Play God. Isn’t that what doctors do every day?
There was no more time to think. Obsidian hands stretched toward her. Aryn screamed. There was an odd sizzling sound, and dimly Grace knew it to be the sound of her own hair shrinking and curling from the heat. She shut her eyes, then reached out with the Touch.
This time she was not afraid of the shadow lurking on the edge of her vision. She did not need to follow the thread—her own thread—that led to it. Without hesitating, she grasped the silvery lines she knew belonged to Lirith and Aryn. Now what?
You did it with fog, Grace. Water is the same stuff, just a little denser. You need a better net, that’s all.
There was no time to weave the threads of the Weirding. Instead she imagined the net in its entirety, and it was there, shimmering in her hands. She cast it toward the flowing stream of silver she knew to be the river, then gasped at the flood of power that washed through her. There was a life in the river that mist could never hold. She nearly lost herself in the myriad of swimming, floating, darting sparks of energy in the water. Then she forced herself back from the edge, clutched the net, and pulled.
It was heavy, terribly heavy. She couldn’t do it; the force of the river was far too great, dragging her down. Then two pairs of cool, shining hands reached out alongside hers.
We’re here, Grace.
Together they pulled, but still the net she had woven would not budge. Then Grace understood. They were struggling against the vast, endless flow of the Weirding in the river, and against so great a force they could never win. But what if she was to draw on that force rather than fight it?
With a single thought Grace reshaped the net into a glowing cup, and she let all the threads of the river pour into it.
Now!
Three sets of bodiless hands touched the cup and—in a simple motion—tipped it over. Silver poured out, streaming in a new direction.
There was a great rushing noise, followed by a crash and a terrible hissing. Grace’s eyes flew open in time to see the krondrim stumble back as a wave spilled over the banks of the river and onto the land. She scrambled up onto the bridge with Aryn and Lirith, avoiding its flow.
The wave was not large. It came no higher than the knees of the Burnt Ones. All the same, the creatures flung their arms up as it washed around them, the black pits of their mouths open but unable to scream.
The cold water screamed for them, shrieking and bubbling around their legs, sending plumes of steam into the air. The krondrim fell into the water, stiffening as they did, like molten steel hardened in an instant in a quenching bucket. More steam billowed upward. Then the water receded, draining back into the river, leaving the stiff, twisted forms of the Burnt Ones to cool upon the shore.
Grace staggered to the foot of the bridge, still clutching Aryn and Lirith. Beltan reached them first, followed by Durge. However, Meridar lingered, gazing at the now-extinguished husk that had been his warhorse, his eyes as flat and unreadable as those of the Burnt Ones.
Beltan gripped Grace’s shoulders with strong hands. His green eyes were wide with many questions, but the one he asked was, “Are you well, Grace?”
She gave a shallow nod—all the answer she could manage.
Durge stepped forward. “Lady Aryn? Lady Lirith? You are safe as well?”
The two women embraced one another. Lirith opened her mouth to reply.
She was interrupted by a sizzling sound. The steam had hidden it, but now it stepped from one of the roiling clouds, its feet hissing against the damp ground with each step. Grace stared, unable to move. So she had miscounted after all. But it must have followed the rocky line of the shore, where no fires would betray its presence.
Before any of them could react, the Burnt One lurched forward. Grace and Beltan were the nearest. She went rigid, wondering how quickly the flames would take her. The krondrim gazed at her with eyes as flat as death—
—then shambled past her and up onto the bridge.
A thin, piteous scream knifed the air. Grace jerked her head around. On the center of the bridge, twenty feet away, Tira scrabbled at Daynen’s tunic, staring as the Burnt One approached. The left side of her face was twisted by terror, while the scarred flesh of the right remained smooth as ever.
“Daynen!” Lirith called. “Don’t move!”
“What is it?” the boy cried, tears streaming from his sightless eyes. He clutched Tira’s trembling body.
Durge sprang forward onto the bridge, then let out a curse and leaped back. He stamped his feet, and only then did Grace see that his boots were smoking.
She looked back at the bridge and gasped. Pits marked the stone where the Burnt One’s feet had sunk into it. A dull red glow spread outward from them, and in moments the entire surface of the bridge between the shore and the krondrim glowed in the thickening dark. Just beyond the Burnt One, the children huddled together on as yet cool stone.
“It’s hot,” Durge said through clenched teeth, still stamping his feet.
The krondrim neared the two children. Tira screamed again. Grace clutched at Beltan, thinking this the end, but instead the Burnt One halted. It seemed to gaze at the children—no, at Tira. Then, in a slow, stiff motion, the krondrim bent forward. What was it doing? Ice replaced fire as Grace understood.
It’s bowing to her—showing obeisance.
Tira’s scream ended, and the fear drained from her face, so that both halves were tranquil. She gazed at the Burnt One with calm eyes, then reached a small hand toward its body.
“It’s going to burn them!” Aryn cried. “Somebody do something!”
Jump, Grace started to shout, but she was startled into silence by a dull blur that moved past her and dashed onto the bridge. Another scream shattered the air—the deep, horrible scream of a man in agony. Meridar.
The knight stiffened as smoke rose from his boots, and moisture poured down his face. Clenching his jaw, he ran across the half-molten stone of the bridge, his chain mail glowing in the bloody light. The krondrim turned around, but its reaction was too slow. Meridar reached out, then coiled his arms around the Burnt One, hugging it close to his body.
The sizzle of flesh cooking was audible on the air. Another scream ripped itself from his lungs, and only after a second did Grace realize it was a word.
“Aryn!”
Then the momentum of Meridar’s dash carried him forward, along with the Burnt One. In a ball of flame they toppled over the side of the bridge and plunged into the swift waters of the river below. There was a hiss, quickly extinguished, then silence. After several heartbeats a pair of dark, intertwined forms bobbed to the surface of the water. Then they sank again and were gone.
Aryn took a staggering step forward. “Sir Meridar …”
Lirith reached out and caught the young woman, holding her back from the foot of the bridge.
“Vathris keep him,” Beltan said in a hoarse voice.
Grace disentangled herself from the blond knight’s arms and gazed at the fiery trails snaking on the other side of the river. They had almost reached the west side of the bridge. She licked parched lips, then spoke the words softly, so Daynen and Tira could not hear.
“The others are coming.”
Beltan followed her gaze. “We’ve got to get the children off the bridge.”
Durge approached the foot of the bridge, then was driven back by the fierce heat. Half the bridge, between the eastern shore and the children, still glowed dull red. “We must wait for the bridge to cool,” the knight said.
Beltan shook his head. “We can’t wait. In two minutes the other krondrim will reach the west side of the bridge. If Meridar made it across, then so can I.”
With a powerful hand, Durge gripped Beltan’s arm and halted the big knight. “I have never heard it spoken that Sir Beltan of Calavan was a man who would discard his life without purpose. Sir Meridar made it across the stones, yes, but by the time he reached the children he was already dead. Would you join him, then, along with the children?”
The two men locked eyes, then Beltan grunted. Durge released him.
“So what do we do?” Beltan said.
The crimson light played across Aryn’s pale features. “The river. They can jump in the river.”
“No, Durge said. “The Dimduorn is too deep here, and its undercurrents too swift. Surely they will drown.”
Beltan started to shrug off his mail shirt. “You’re right, Durge. But it’s still their only chance. Once they jump, you and I will have to—”
“Daynen! No!”
Grace had never heard Lirith scream before, not even when Garf was attacked by the bear. She looked up, and her heart became ash in the pit of her chest. Daynen had lifted Tira onto his shoulders. Even as Grace watched, the blind boy took another step along the bridge, placing his bare feet on hot, glowing rock.
