CHOSEN (24 page)

“I’m all right.”

“I know you’re stronger than any of us, but this you can’t resist. It will start to eat at you, twist your judgment, change who you are. I couldn’t stand it to lose you. Don’t fight me.”

“Maralt—”

“Don’t fight it, Carryn. I don’t want to hurt you.”

He didn’t wait for her permission. He was in her mind as he’d been so many times before, only this time she didn’t want it. She knew he was right, and still she didn’t want to lose what she thought she had learned. She’d seen a monster and it hadn’t shattered her mind. She wanted to be able to face it again, and to know it, but Maralt was there, taking that from her too.

There was pain, and a kind of darkness she’d never known before. There was a sense of something else coming from her brother she didn’t recognize, but that too was erased. There was noise for a time of screaming, though the hall outside the Room of Orbs was as quiet as a tomb. And there was the sound of Maralt, weeping as he eased her down to the floor. And she didn’t know why.

~*~

Chapter 19

It was an incredibly weird sensation, watching as if he was a spectator while masses of people went by him, running their hands over him, across his chest, down his arms, over his head, holding his hands. After a while Dynan stopped trying to acknowledge them, or do anything except stand there and let them touch him.

Some who approached him were deformed and they stood facing him, sometimes with both hands on him, head bowed as if praying. He watched in amazement while they were transformed back to a normal, undistorted person. It was too overwhelming. He couldn’t believe anything he was doing was making this happen to these people, these souls. He didn’t feel like he had special powers to heal them, but heal they did, right in front of him.

To his surprise some of them disappeared, dissolving to nothing, a horrifying thing to witness before Fadril came, and explained they were just going on, crossing over, as she put it. They had at last what they were seeking. It was amazing, and gratifying, and more incredible than watching people be healed.

He stood for a long time, and then he leaned against a big rock when he was tired of standing, until finally Fadril came and stopped the flow of people. She told them he had to rest. They didn’t complain. They let him go and went back to doing whatever they’d been doing before.

“There’s someone I want you to see,” Fadril said.

She pulled him into a building that had a rectangular interior courtyard open to the sunless sky. Steps of three led down into it where there were long benches and a central fountain surrounded by smaller pools. There were three men there, talking together, but they turned to him when he entered.

Dynan stopped on the top step, halted by unexpected suspicion and fear. Polen Forb, Faulkin Yeld and Grint Heddly were standing there, joking with one another, smiling as they turned to look at him.

Dynan remembered Polen telling him that Fadril wasn’t here. The image of him holding down his hand right before his face melded into one of the Six made Dynan wonder if he really was Polen or one of them. Faulkin Yeld had helped him across the blood river, sending him straight into the trap. In the cave, it had sounded like they’d been torn limb from limb. Dynan didn’t know how they could possibly be standing here now.

“What is it?” Fadril asked, but Polen was nodding his head.

“We saw what happened at the crossing,” he said. “We were all watching. We tried to get down to you and we couldn’t.”

“All three of you?” Dynan asked, his eyes flicking to Faulkin.

“All of us,” Polen said, confused by the question, but then he guessed. “One of them was in the river with you, when you went under and then they ‘saved’ you. Well it wasn’t any of us.”

“You mean he thinks we were with them?” Grint said, looking from Polen to Faul.

“They made him think we were, Grint,” Faul said, folding his arms and turning to the fountain. “Can’t really blame him.”

“How did you get out of the cave?” Dynan asked, not at all convinced, but the question angered Fadril.

“I trust these men,” she said as if that should be enough for him.

“So did I,” Dynan said.

“Fadril, it’s all right,” Polen said but Grint didn’t like it.

“You mean now you don’t trust us?” he said. “For something we had nothing to do with? I sure hope he’s who you say he is, Your Majesty. He’s starting to not be worth all the trouble.”

“Grint,” Polen said. “Try using your head. Look at your clean fingers and close your mouth.”

Dynan kept himself from stepping back when Polen joined him on the stair. “How did you get out of the cave?”

“The same way you did, through a hole,” Polen said.

“I heard—”

“—what they wanted you to hear, son.”

Dynan heard in his head the echo of their screams, the feeling of hopelessness and terror, and realized that Polen was right. The Six would want him to feel like there was no one left to help him and had the double purpose of making Dynan happy to see them at the river, and maybe a third purpose in making him not trust them here. The Six knew they weren’t taken.

“You lied to me,” he said, wanting one last answer, but he thought he already knew it, and glanced to their Queen.

“I had to be sure of you,” Polen said, looking with him. “We don’t talk about her, especially out in the wild. I swore to protect her too.”

Dynan nodded, accepting his word as the truth, and then felt bad for doubting him, along with a rush of relief that he was still Polen Forb. There was a sense of safety that went around him. He knew if Polen could do anything to help him, he would.

“I’m sorry.”

“I hear you did all right without us,” Polen said. “Saw it too. You faced off with the First. You got through. That’s a thing that hasn’t happened in...well, more years than I can count. And you kept that brother of yours from coming here.”

“It was someone else,” Dynan said. “On the other side.”

“I’m pretty sure I saw you walking away from your only way out of here,” Polen said, clapped him on the back, and then nodded to the Queen. “And now you have to help me stop her from doing something rash.”

Dynan looked with him. “You want to keep her from going with me.”

“With us,” Polen said. “I’m not letting you face the pit on your own, even if it means the end of me, and it might. No, you can’t save us all. Where we’re going, you may not be able to save yourself or Alurn, but that’s the point. You can’t let anything or anyone get in the way of that. Including Her Majesty over there.”

Dynan knew he was right, but he didn’t think he could do it. “Maybe I should go alone,” he said.

Polen scoffed at that. “And you’d be about as dim-witted as Grint if you tried. Don’t listen to him. He’s a lump from Hecs.”

“Hecs,” Dynan said. “That’s a farm town along the northern range - still.”

“Grint wasn’t a farmer. That’d be an insult to their intelligence. The war rolled over him and we rolled him up. You point him where the fight is and that’s what he does. There’s not a whole lot upstairs otherwise. So don’t act like him.”

“I’m not going to risk—”

“You are. Get used to the thought, boy. You’re risking everything, yourself included. We’re going along with you. It isn’t up for debate, so wrap your mind around the concept. What is up for discussion, and an argument with her, is how she plays into it. She wants to take an army to the Gates of Hell. You noticed we don’t have a lot of soldier material here.”

Dynan had noticed. The people he saw who came to him were mostly women, children or men who were too old or too young. He wondered how Fadril planned to make an army and couldn’t believe she meant these people.

“Polen, stop plotting behind my back,” Fadril said, coming over to them.

“I wouldn’t dream of it, Your Majesty,” he said.

“You would.”

“So you believe it now,” Dynan said, “that Alurn is here.”

“I’m afraid not to believe it. If it’s true, none of us have much time left. You strengthening our people gets us more, but it won’t last. We have to get you both out of here before we lose everything we have left. This place will stop existing as an oasis. So regardless of what you think of as a qualified soldier, Pol, these people are doomed if they do nothing.”

“Even the babies?” he asked.

“I’m not taking the babies or the women who tend them. Don’t be ridiculous.”

“You’re the one being ridiculous. You think you can take them to the gate without them ending up as fodder?”

“With Dynan protecting them, yes. What choice do we have?”

“Something that doesn’t involve leading these people to a place where they have no chance of escaping.”

“You could use them as a diversion,” Dynan said then, recalling a lecture from one of his strategic mechanics classes taught by Boral Sloyl. Fadril and Polen stopped arguing and looked at him. “If we need an army, then I’m guessing they have one too. Creatures and whatever. We take the strongest of ours with us, the archers you used to save me and anyone else who’s good enough. We move fast and under cover. The rest we send out on a parallel course out in the open. They’ll be a large enough looking force that the Six will send at least the same number to meet them, or if we’re really lucky, their whole force.”

“What are they going to fight with?” Polen asked.

“They don’t have to fight,” Dynan said. “They just have to run. They need to be able to scatter like the wind and then hide.”

Fadril liked the idea enough to give him a kiss on the cheek, smiling until he gave her his next suggestion.

“You should lead them,” he said.

“No.”

“They’ll need someone to help get them through.”

“No,” Fadril said even when Polen agreed with him. She patted Dynan’s arm. “I’m coming with you. I’m going to help save my husband. I want to see him. You can’t talk me out of it, Polen. I understand the danger.”

“I don’t think you do, and you’re asking me to break the vow I took, that damned oath that’s bound me to your side since the day I met you.”

“Yes. Our souls are already damned.”

“Wait a minute,” Dynan said to stop the argument. “What are you talking about?”

“She swore she would never leave this place, for the souls of her children,” Polen said while Fadril turned away. “Alurn doesn’t know she’s here. If he sees her, he won’t leave her here again, which means he won’t leave.”

“He isn’t going to see me,” Fadril said. “Polen, we don’t have time for these questions and doubts. Get everyone together, explain it to them. We need to move.”

Polen hesitated to obey her. Dynan recognized the authoritative tone though and so did he. Polen didn’t argue but he didn’t go without grumbling under his breath. He cast Dynan a glance on his way by. Grint and Faul went with him. Fadril moved to the fountain and sat down there, staring down into the water.

Dynan knew he was supposed to try and talk her out of going, but he doubted it would work. He remembered too the accuracy of her bow and thought Polen was being unnecessarily over-protective. Dynan went and sat with her. He ran his hand through the water, still relishing the feel of it.

“Who did you swear to?”

“To a force of pure evil, and I’m bound by it,” she said, and he knew she meant the demon. “There isn’t anything you can do.”

“Maybe you only think you’re bound by it,” he said.

She wouldn’t be convinced otherwise. She was afraid if she attempted to leave with Alurn or follow her children into the Beyond, they would be brought to the Gate. Dynan shook his head at her stubbornness.

“I always thought once you made it to the Blessed Realm you didn’t have to worry about anything bad happening ever again. Fadril, are the Gods still stronger?”

“Yes, or we’d be lost already.”

“The Gods aren’t going to hand your children over,” he said.

“What if there isn’t a choice?” she whispered.

“What if there is? Are the Gods stronger? Do you believe it? Here, where we are right now seems about two steps away from them. Maybe you should ask them.”

He patted her hand, took a last look at the water flowing around the fountain and left.

Outside, he found Polen and the others getting everyone organized, which was easier managed than Dynan thought it would be. They seemed to already know. There were no arguments or seemingly any fear. The ‘army’, composed primarily of older men, more women than he was comfortable with sending off into danger and a lot of young boys, some younger than he was, lined up in rank upon rank. Many were fashioning clubs out of wood or long staffs that were generally associated with walking and not fighting. There were a few archers, but that was all the weaponry they had.

The idea, and Polen agreed it was the only option, was for them to put themselves into the mouth of the beast, and once they had its attention, run like mad. There was a little debate on how close that had to be, but in the end, everyone agreed on a narrow plain just outside the gap that would take them to the Gates.

The incursion force was taking the mountain route, which was a shorter distance, but because of the up and down nature of the trek, they’d all arrive fairly close together. In any case, the smaller band would wait for the diversion before striking. Dynan started doubting it would be enough, since there could be a demon involved.

There were other creatures, like the dogs with spikes, and there would certainly be six incredibly nasty copies of Alurn’s brother. Dynan wondered what defense there was against them. There was a nervous, unpleasant sort of sensation in the pit of his stomach over the whole thing. Most of it was his idea. He hoped it worked.

Fadril gave Dynan a sheath for the sword she loaned him. Polen came up with a set of hardened leather armor that might keep any enemy arrows from hitting him. Grint found him a pair of arm bracers as an apology. Faulkin only smiled at Grint’s discomfort and clapped Dynan on the back as he went by.

It was a strange, disquieting ritual; getting ready for war. Dynan looked around him as he put on the things he’d been given, tightening straps, adjusting the sword belt and sheath. There were others going about the business of preparing. He knew why he was there and what he had to do, but for these others, he didn’t know why they fought, considering their half-existence.