Sacrifice (Book 4) (22 page)

“Help me up, Dason. I am well enough,” she said. “Get Maewen and General Harband. We can’t delay.”

She stumbled, and Dason grabbed her arm to steady her. “You must rest!”

“There is no time. Is Athan gone?”

“Yes. Eldaloth or Mikkik or whoever ordered them to leave immediately for Echo Hold.”

“Then time is short. We will ride, even if you must tie me to the horse.”

The vulgar, jeering crowd clogged every avenue of Echo Hold, the Eldephaere overwhelmed by the sheer number of spectators hoping for a glimpse of the First Mother of Rhugoth being dragged to her death. Gen and Cadaen muscled their way forward. The late afternoon sunshine beat down like a hammer on the uplifted, rocky forge of Echo Hold. The sweat and humid stench of the mob was nauseating, but no inconvenience could slow or deter the two from their purpose. They shoved and elbowed citizens and soldiers alike without reservation.

“Once we get to the next intersection, we must bear left!” Cadaen shouted over the crowd, his stern, determined face more than enough to convince most people to clear out of his way. “She is moving.”

During their two day journey toward the mountain stronghold, Cadaen had felt Mirelle weakening from lack of nourishment. After he and Gen had entered the city that afternoon, Cadaen gritted his teeth and reported that she had endured a whipping, and that her bonds had rubbed her wrists and ankles into festering wounds. Gen felt his ire rising, and only the Shadan’s training kept him under control. In the back of his mind he knew that as soon as he saw Mirelle bruised and beaten, there would be no damming up the fiery indignation he could feel beginning to burn in his heart. Cadaen’s steadily reddening face let Gen know that the same fire consumed him, as well.

Cadaen stopped short. “They are dragging her!”

A shout erupted at the intersection in their view, and the people surged forward. A cavalry unit of Eldephaere trotted by escorting a Padra, the blue pendants adorning their lances streaming behind them. A mighty black warhorse ridden by the executioner slashed through their view, rope tied to its pommel, a rope Gen knew was tied to Mirelle’s wrists. Another cavalry unit followed, the people surging into the street after it. Cadaen froze for a moment in horror, and Gen used Trysmagic to create a simple sword in Cadaen’s hand.

“Here!” Gen said. “Follow me!”

Cadaen expressed no surprise at Gen’s sudden production of a weapon, and they turned right into an alleyway running parallel to the street along which the cruel procession traveled. Some spectators ran with them, hoping to catch up with the spectacle. Others plodded along, but the time for shoves and polite elbows had ended. Gen and Cadaen simply blasted anyone in their way onto the ground or into the wall. Cadaen let out a ferocious yell, brandishing his sword, and people dove out of their way.

The alley ended its parallel track and forced them back toward the main street, the mob thick as it pulsed forward at a jog. Cadaen yelled for people to move as he sprinted behind Gen, and at the corner of the street they met their first resistance in the form of three Eldephaere who had been alerted to the inexorable sprint of two madmen, one armed. The soldiers pulled their weapons and hefted their circular shields as Cadaen and Gen approached. They didn’t slow.

Using Trysmagic, Gen undid cracks of metal along the swords where the blades met the hilts, and as the Eldephaere pulled them back to strike, the blades simply fell to the ground useless. Gen unleashed a hard shove to one as he pushed by, Cadaen decapitating another as the two of them tried to work their way into the main flow that was chasing the suffering First Mother.

The Eldephaere raised a shout and tried to chase them, putting their shields to good use to push the intervening onlookers out of the way. Gen scanned ahead. The horse units and the executioner had reached farther than he had hoped, disappearing around a corner as the procession pushed toward the town square. The sheer number of people would make it impossible for even a tenth of them to witness the burning personally.

Behind them the Eldephaere pressed toward them. Ahead the dense crowd compressed into an impenetrable shield to bar their way. The more they pushed toward the square, the more trapped they became. Cadaen roared, using his sword to encourage people to move, slicing anyone who thought to impede them.

The pursuing Eldephaere continued to scream and yell, and along the edges of the crowd, their fellow soldiers left their posts along the route and pressed into the crowd in an attempt to reach them. Gen formed a sword in his hand, creating an edge so sharp that when he turned and hacked at the Eldephaere behind him, the blade passed through the shield as if it were nothing more than paper. The soldier fell in a splash of blood, the sudden violence pulling the people behind to a halt, only to be bowled over by the Eldephaere coming up from behind. Cadaen ran another soldier through, and he collapsed in a heap to be trodden on by those trying to escape the bloodshed.

Gen turned to try to keep moving forward, but the soldiers thickened as the hopeful spectators thinned, realizing that a fight was in the offing. As Gen and Cadaen reached the rear boundary of the crowd wall outside the square, they found themselves surrounded by nearly twenty soldiers. The spectators forming a ring around them, bets changing hands.

Shield at the ready, one of the Eldephaere stepped forward. “Drop your weapons and. . .”

Gen hacked him down, his blade thrusting through the shield with ease and puncturing the soldier’s heart.

We don’t have time for this!
Gen thought as shout erupted from the square behind them. But the Eldephaere rushed and forced his concentration back to his own survival. The initial five soldiers came at them cautiously, but after Cadaen and Gen hacked them down with speed and skill they had never seen, the rest backed off a space to reconsider. The bets began in earnest.

Cadaen came to Gen’s side. “I only have seen three men fight like you do.”

Mirelle’s agonized scream from the square and Cadaen’s petrified countenance made his next words unnecessary. “She burns!”

The Eldephaere appeared ready to rush again, and the crowd near the square began to chant, “Burn, burn, burn!”

“Go, my brother,” Cadaen said, a tear running down his cheek. “If you have the power to stop this, then do it.”

Gen nodded and turned, and within his heart an agony and a rage built to a crescendo that all his control and all his training could not stop. Between him and the square was a wall of people thirty feet thick, and pulling in the power of Duam he yelled the ancient words of the incantation with all the anger he possessed.

“Shui’ Shei!”

A mighty gale of wind blasted into the crowd like an unseen battering ram and threw bodies up and away to slam into buildings and to fall into and crush the crowd. Gen sped down the newly cleared avenue as screams tore the air. He could see her now. Mirelle was tied to a pole above a burning pile of wood, the flames reddening and peeling her legs and setting her dress on fire. She screamed and wept in pain, red face soaked with tears.

The executioner and the Padra stood nearby, and Gen killed them both with a thought, undoing veins in their heads. They slumped lifeless from the platform, the executioner falling into his own fire and throwing up sparks.

The Eldephaere crowded into the gap that he had created, but with a Duam-powered leap, he sailed over them, landing twenty feet from Mirelle. Gen’s fury burned white hot and without remorse he unleashed his next assault.

“Forua Kael!”

The fiery pile of wood underneath Mirelle exploded outward from the center, the wood whistling through the air with deadly, burning velocity. The heavy logs plowed avenues of death through the terrified Eldephaere. They continued on to level the forward ranks of the bloodthirsty crowd. The burning branches and sticks punctured unprotected bodies and knocked even more revelers to the ground. In terror the crowd reversed course and ran in the opposite direction.

Not a single twig remained beneath the charred First Mother, who hung unconscious from the abandoned pole. Gen rushed to her, using Trysmagic to free her hands and feet of her bonds. Limp, she fell into his arms, face blackened and legs charred. He had little of Duammagic left to avail him, and he spent the last of its strength to heal her lungs and to alleviate the damage of her legs. Even so, he could not tell if she would live, so bad was the damage. Tears welled up in his eyes as he carried her beaten, burned body away from the square. He needed to see if Cadaen yet lived.

A group of Eldephaere approached from the other side of the square, crossbowmen coming to the front. Gen killed them with Trysmagic before they could even raise their weapons. The determination of the rest failed them and they backed away. All before him fled as he ran back down the avenue. He found Cadaen lying in the street amid a pile of dead Eldephaere, blood running freely from many wounds. Gen had nothing left with which to heal him. Cadaen reached up and stroked Mirelle’s hair, his eyes heavy with approaching death.

“She is yours now, Gen,” he said. “Help her live. I am done.”

The old Protector closed his eyes and his breath left him. With difficulty, Gen fought down his emotions. They had to survive, and to survive they had to evade a city teeming with enemies. He ducked down an alley and made a series of confusing turns before finding an old, crumbling building carved from the stone. He darted up a flight of treacherous stairs. The edifice was abandoned, and he ducked through a doorless entryway and used Trysmagic to create a slab of stone that would make it appear to the passerby that there was just a wall.

A single window on the opposite wall he covered with shutters, and with the rest of the Trysmagic he possessed, he created the herbs and water he would need to treat Mirelle’s damaged body until his Duammagic recovered enough to heal her completely. Only Mynmagic was available to him now, and as he began his mundane ministrations he hoped for several hours of peace. Getting out of the city would be impossible until Mirelle was healed—and it would prove difficult even then.

Shutting away the commotion outside the window, he bathed her charred legs, hoping to keep them from festering to save her body’s strength from the task of fighting infection. With the water, he cleaned her face and arms the best he could, whispering to her unconscious mind to hang on a few hours more. The brutal pace of the last few days and the heavy expenditure of magic exhausted him. After forcing some water down her throat, he lay back on the floor and drifted off to sleep as the heat of the day cooled to evening.

The sound of Mirelle groaning in pain wrenched him out of slumber a couple of hours later. It was dark, but he sought her hand and used Mynmagic to trick her mind into feeling no pain at all. She relaxed and fell back into a peaceful slumber. Standing, he opened a shutter for a view of the dark street below. They hadn’t gone far from the square, and the marching of feet and clamor of shouted orders echoed everywhere. Closing the shutter, he lay back down.

Throughout the night, the sounds of soldiers passing beneath the windows woke him, though not until morning did he hear them searching the building where they hid. He waited quietly as they poked around the ruin, but no one was observant enough to realize there was a window on the outside that opened to a hidden room, and they left.

By midday, his reserves felt strong enough to attempt to heal her, but before he did, he used Trysmagic to dissolve her ruined dress and create a modest dress for her in its place. He chose one that a simple country girl might wear, to help her blend in when they attempted escape.

Delving deep into his reserves, he took her hand and poured the healing energy of Duammagic into Mirelle’s flagging body, restoring the flesh, undoing the swelling, and killing the infections already starting to take root. To heal her completely took all the Duammagic he possessed, but her legs were still scarred from the fire. Her eyes fluttered and then popped open, and Gen helped her to sit up, bringing her water.

“Where am I?” she asked, a little frightened.

“In Echo Hold,” Gen said. “You are safe for the moment.”

She drank, her eyes regarding him skeptically in the dim light admitted from the shutters.

“And who are you?”

“I am called Amos these days, but under a different name I was one of the few men who enjoyed the favor of the First Mother of Rhugoth. And, I might add, one of the few—if not the only—to ever kiss her.”

The water fell out of Mirelle’s hand and onto the floor, and her mouth gaped. She leaned in for a closer look. “Gen? It can’t be! The voice is yours, but, the face. . . Sweet Eldaloth, it is you!”

She dove at him and knocked him to the ground, lying on top of him and kissing him, her tears running down her face and onto his. She finally sat up, straddling him and inspecting his face.

“How are you not dead? How dare you not be dead! I held you in my arms and made this horrible blubbering scene crying over you! And where did all your scars go? And a beard?”