Son of Thunder (18 page)

“Why should I despise my sister?” asked Thanar. He turned to the tree’s great trunk. “We may be from different branches, but we are linked nevertheless. All living things are. From the deepest root to the highest bough, we are all one tree.”

“I like that,” Kellin answered, lowering her head. “I wish everyone thought that way. Some sages follow your line of wisdom. They think all life originated in one place and continues in what some call the Endless March—changing, adapting, and improving—in much the same way that farmers improve their livestock through breeding.”

“I’ve heard of such thinking,” Thanar said. “Do you believe it?”

Kellin shrugged. “It’s not my area. It makes sense to me, though. And it cuts to the heart of what you said: that all of life may have a common origin and therefore be linked.”

“I need no sage to tell me that. I feel it.” He asked, “What god do you revere?”

“Principally,” she said, “I worship Oghma. Why?”

“The Binder of What Is Known,” he said, repeating one of the titles of the Lord of Knowledge. Kellin was faintly surprised Thanar knew of it, that he even knew of Oghma. She supposed it made sense for him to know of a god so opposite to his world view. “Tell me, why should the world be bound? Is not everything dead once it’s bound? Once it is written in books or scrolls, it no longer lives in nature.”

“I’d rather think that it will live forever if it’s written,” Kellin answered.

“And our tribe?” Thanar probed. “If we are destroyed, will we live forever in your father’s books, or those you will write in the future?”

“You will be remembered,” said Kellin, “by anyone who cares to remember you.”

Thanar caught a fallen leaf. It was dry and withered, and he crushed it in his fingers.

“Perhaps that’s better than nothing,” he said.

“You’re not like the others,” Kellin pressed. “I understand you lived apart from the Thunderbeasts for many years. Do you consider yourself a member of the tribe?”

“Still the sage.” Thanar smiled mysteriously. “Do you mean to put my answer in a book?”

“I can’t promise I won’t,” said Kellin, smiling back. She felt much more comfortable with him.

“I spent many years away from it, truly,” said Thanar. “But I was born a Thunderbeast and a Thunderbeast I remain. Even if the rest of the tribe withered and died, and I spent a lifetime in the Spine of the World, never seeing another human or speaking another word aloud, a Thunderbeast I would stay.”

“Yet in the past you sought to distance yourself from your tribe.”

“Others have done worse. Thluna’s closest friend left the tribe to join the Black Lions, a matter which weighs heavily on him. The Black Lions’ way holds much appeal for the young Uthgardt, it seems. I wonder, in Garstak’s soul, does he still think of himself as a Thunderbeast? As for myself, after all this is over—and assuming I still live—I may choose to leave them behind for good. I hold that my tribe is something I carry around inside my heart.”

“I’m worried about Vell,” Kellin admitted. “He doesn’t feel much connection to his tribe. Not now.”

“Not ever,” corrected Thanar. “He was one of the silent. You have seen them—Hengin, Grallah, Ilskar, and Draf—our warrior companions who follow their chief’s orders absolutely and who seldom speak. I would wager that in their depths, they do not identify with their tribe as they feel they should, and that this is a matter of private shame. Many generations have pressed on in such anguish.”

“What worries me,” said Kellin,” is that Vell doesn’t have anything else solid to hold on to.”

“He’ll have his own choices to make,” said Thanar. “We must have faith that he’ll make them properly.”

Kellin looked up at the vast Canvas of Grandfather Tree’s leaves and was lost again in its beauty and majesty. “Do you think it would be all right to stay here a bit longer?” she asked.

Thanar smiled. “I don’t think it will do any harm,” he said, and together they lingered and marveled at the tree’s everlasting dignity, undiminished by the nagging hollowness they felt in their hearts.

Vell flinched as the scales took him. Like an arrow to his brain, the change came, and he could feel all of his flesh awaken with thick natural armor, making his limbs heavy.

What scared him most was how natural it felt.

Two trolls were bearing down on him, their green flesh stretched taut over jagged bones. The woods were bright here, the trees spaced far apart and the sun shining brightly above. This was the reason Lanaal had lured the trolls here, where the space was open enough to accommodate even a behemoth.

Lanaal was here, Vell knew, perched somewhere in the trees above, watching and waiting. Within his blood frenzy, his eyes were clouded over with the insensibility of rage, but he could still hear a sharp, shrill bird call—Lanaal goading him forward, daring him to call on his full transformation. But he held back, even as one of the trolls wrapped its huge hands around his neck and twisted.

Vell clapped his hands on the troll’s forearm and squeezed tight, ripping the arm free of his scaled neck. He kicked the troll’s left knee then the other, sending it tumbling backward onto the leaf-covered forest floor. Before it could recover, he jumped onto it with all of his weight, landing with both feet on the troll’s chest. Troll bones snapped under his impact, and he watched its hideous face as the shock hit home, it eyes bugging out and its mouth spewing forth a plume of thick green liquid that splashed over its face.

Vell knew he shouldn’t finish the fight too swiftly. Though his sense of reasoning was weakened in his state, he had no intention of drawing the death blow yet. He was enjoying himself. When Vell shifted his attention to the other troll, staring up into the green-gray face topped with a wiry shock of black hair, he saw something he never would have suspected: fear.

The ground trembled around Vell as he walked. So it was with the beast shamans of his tribe when they called on the powers of the Thunderbeast and grew armor of scales.

Vell commanded the tremors to cease, to see if they would. And they did.

Hopping off his downed victim, Vell strode toward the troll slowly and it stepped backward, watching him intently and bracing for the attack. Armed with nothing but his own scaly strength, Vell plunged forward toward the troll’s middle, delivering a forceful punch. The troll withstood the blow and struggled with Vell, raking its claws through his tribal robes, ripping them to find any skin beneath not protected by those thick scales. Finding none, the troll brought its fist to the side of Vell’s head. The blow echoed like thunder through his skull and sent him flying against a fragile tree nearby. The trunk cracked behind him as the full brunt of his weight struck. The tree toppled into the clearing with a mighty noise.

The first troll’s regenerative powers worked to knit its shattered bones together, and the monster rose to confront Vell again. With his feet against the stump of the broken tree, Vell wrapped his arms around the fallen trunk and spun it in a circle, its branches breaking off as it struck other trees. This brought complaint from the treetops above, and even in his rage, he thought of Lanaal in bird form, likely dislodged from her perch.

Facing the two trolls, his arms still around the trunk, Vell used it as a caber, hurling it full on against the trolls. It struck them both in the midsection, knocking them both backward. Like a great pin it rolled, over their chests and faces, stripping its bark on their rough skin. And like an engine of destruction, Vell was on them, tearing into their bodies with foot and fist.

A high-pitched trill sounded above him, and Vell was partly drawn out of his blood fury to remember what he was here to do. Standing tall and straight, he summoned the heart of his courage, not the courage that compelled him to fight monsters, but that which let him look into the most frightening things lurking inside him. He clapped his eyes shut and searched his depths for the will to leave his body behind and fully accept the scales’ embrace.

Vell’s throat went dry and his mouth filled with the acrid taste of growing fear. Troll breath washed upon him, but he paid it no mind; the danger would make it easier, he decided. The beast within must emerge—this was life or death, just as it was when Sungar’s Camp was under siege. His blood coursed faster and thicker through his veins, his pulse throbbed in his neck like a drum beat, but the beast stayed sleeping. Vell’s mood disintegrated and his energy with it, and when he looked down at his hands they were pink flesh, the scales retreating as suddenly as they had come.

And two enraged trolls were bearing down on him.

A sword fell from above, landing with a thud at his feet. Vell reached down and grasped its hilt. It was an elegantly curved elven blade, thinner and lighter than he had ever used, but it cut deep as he sliced a neat slash through a troll’s neck—blood poured down its bare green chest. With a cry and a rush of air, a gigantic falcon swooped down next to him, tearing at the other troll’s face, claiming both of its eyes with its sharp talons. Blind and howling, the troll batted at the bird and stumbled through the wood, bashing into trees as Lanaal circled and occasionally dived to strike again.

How long has it been since I fought as myself? Vell wondered. He felt good as he tore into the troll again and again, moving quickly to avoid its blows. A glorious swell filled his senses, and his heart awakened to barbarian joy. The troll clawed at his arm and wounded him, and he welcomed this too, the human pain and the feel of blood trickling down his body. To defeat the troll without his powers? A greater achievement by any account, he decided, slicing through his foe’s leg and sending it toppling to the ground.

At last, he drew a small vial from a pocket inside his deerskin robes, also a gift from Lanaal. He uncorked it and emptied the contents onto the troll’s ugly features.

The liquid hissed and bubbled down the troll’s face, trickling off its chin onto its chest. It instinctively tried to soothe its wounds by wiping at them, but this only burned its hands as well. Its skin melted on its face, leaving gruesome black-green flesh showing underneath. Its features damaged by the acid and far beyond regeneration, the troll stopped struggling and collapsed on the forest floor.

Spinning around to find the other troll, Vell discovered that Lanaal had transformed back into an elf to finish off the lumbering monster. From her robes she drew a few darts and—with strength surprising for her thin form—drove them into vital places on the troll’s body. Each of them leaked acid that seeped into its body. Its agonized cries were deafening as it melted from within.

Lanaal walked over to Vell. “Vell,” she said. “By the Winged Mother, what went wrong?”

But Vell couldn’t stop smiling. “I haven’t felt this good in a long time. That was invigorating, fighting with my own body, my own skills. With the Thunderbeasts I rarely face foes except as part of a horde. I had forgotten the joy of it.” He looked down at the demolished troll. “My kill, not the Thunderbeast’s.”

Lanaal frowned. “You tried to turn into the behemoth,” she said, “but you lost the partial transformation that you had already achieved. How did this happen?”

“I think it rejected me,” said Vell. “Whatever’s inside me did not care to rear its head. Perhaps it did not deem the situation serious enough.”

“Or perhaps you did not call it properly,” Lanaal said. “Not seriously enough. You talk as if it’s something else. You need to think differently. Acknowledge that it is another side of Vell.”

“Are you in my head, elf?” asked Vell. “Do you know what I feel? Keirkrad, Kellin, Sungar, you, and everyone else think they know better than me. But who among you looks through my eyes?” He clenched his fist in anger—not the barbarian rage that he could sate with violence, but something much more complex and difficult to drive off.

“So you consider this experience a failure,” said Lanaal.

“No,” Vell smiled. “My eyes are clearer now. I tasted battle and felt alive again. No thanks to the enemy inside.”

“It’s not an enemy, Vell!” Lanaal protested. “Just a resource. A powerful one for good or ill—it will destroy you if you don’t make it obey you.”

“It’s a demon,” Vell proclaimed. “One I must strive to cast out.”

Lanaal breathed heavily, her bronze-tinged face streaked with redness. “It may not be possible to remove it, Vell,” she warned.

“I will strive nevertheless,” Vell promised. “Thank you for helping me, Lanaal. I hope I can still call you my friend.”

“Have no fear,” she whispered. Her smile was filled with concern. “I will help however I can. But if you are seeking answers to your puzzle, I don’t know if I can help you any further.”

“There may be other possibilities,” said Vell. “Rask mentioned something about the Fountains of Memory.”

Sprites fell like hostile rain. The Antiquarians, Leng, Ardeth, and Gan held their ground against waves and waves of them. The sprites were joined by grigs playing their dreadful fiddles, gossamer-winged pixies, and even some of the seldom-seen nixies. The fey climbed the trees, dived down on the party below, and launched their arrows. The battlefield rang with the grigs’ discordant music.

“If we were to surrender,” Ardeth shouted through the cacophony, “do you suppose they’d stop playing?”

Amid a duskwood grove carpeted in damp moss, the fey ambushed them and pressed the attack, seemingly unconcerned about their massive casualties. Each swing of Gan’s greataxe killed five of them at a time, and the blades of Nithinial and Royce swung unceasingly, slicing the small, fragile creatures with ease. Ardeth crouched with her crossbow and targeted the pixies with her deadly bolts, while Gunton used a net to trap them, then finish them with the point of a short spear. Fey blood pooled on the forest floor. Bessick swung his chains, snagging wings and ripping sprites apart with their cruel spikes. Vonelh blasted the creatures with huge gusts of wind that blew their arrows astray and toppled the smaller sprites, their wings beating hopelessly as the air funneled them hard against the trees.

“If only I could drop a fireball and let them all burn away,” Vonelh said, but he knew the danger to the trees was far too great.