The Book of Deacon: Book 03 - The Battle of Verril (45 page)

“How . . . how did you find us?” she
managed.

“Myranda, I could find you anywhere,” he
said, throwing his arms about her shivering body.

She hugged him back, tears rolling down her
face. For a moment the two stood, holding each other tight.
Emotions flooded over them. There was so much to say. So much to
hear. An eternity in that warm embrace would not have been enough,
but each knew that there was more to be done. Reluctantly they
parted. Ivy had made her way to the ground and was tugging at Lain.
Together the three managed to lower their barely conscious friend
to the ground.

It did not take the eye of a healer to know
that Lain was near the end. His breath was leaving his body in thin
wisps. Clouded eyes wavered slowly and refused to focus. Every
joint was swollen or crooked. Every muscle was shriveled or torn.
Every inch of skin was blistered, bleeding or scarred. Myranda's
numb fingers closed tighter about her staff. She tried to form the
first incantations of a healing spell, but she couldn't shape the
words. Her will was a tatters. Her soul was wrung dry. She simply
didn't have anything left. Deacon placed his hand on hers.

A cool steadiness smoothed the wrinkles of
her mind. Neither she nor Deacon had much left to give, but
together they amounted to something more. Slowly and deliberately,
the spells were formed. Lain passed into a deep, healing sleep.
Wounds were closed. Bones and joints clicked back into place.
Swelling drifted away. It took great effort, and greater care, but
the two minds working as one finally put Lain's broken form in
order. He was by no means healed, but he would make it through the
night.

Ivy had been watching anxiously, but slowly
the fear melted away. She knew nothing of healing, but she knew a
proper slumber when she saw it. With her friend safe, she turned to
the soldiers behind her. While the wizards had been doing their
work the celebration had settled down. Now there was nothing but a
powerful silence as every last warrior looked upon the spectacle
before them. Myranda they had expected, and they had known of the
others as well. No one had actually believed it. It had never
occurred to Deacon that a dragon and a pair of malthropes might
come as a shock to them, that perhaps they'd distrusted the
Alliance Army's poster. He'd come to accept them, there was no
reason why anyone else might not. Now there was the whistle of
windblown snow and the cold stare of a battalion of warriors, some
nervously gripping their weapons and worrying that they might have
let the wrong group through.

“Hello!” Ivy said brightly, eager to break
the silence.

The response was the long slow slide of steel
from its sheath and the crackle of hot stone cooling on the icy
ground.

“Um. I'm Ivy . . . “ she offered. “What are
your names?”

“Ivy? The prodigy?” asked a soldier
doubtfully, recognizing the name.

“Yes, yes! That's me! You've heard of me?”
she said excitedly.

A crackle coming from the severed head and
stone hand that marked the former site of the portal drew the
attentions of the soldiers. There was the hiss of steam escaping.
It seemed odd to all in attendance that such a thing would not have
occurred sooner, and odder still that it seemed to grow stronger
with each passing moment. The steam condensed quickly into a
swirling cloud. The cloud grew denser and tighter, finally taking
on a very definite form.

“Oh good! Ether made it too!” Ivy said, even
glad to see her old adversary.

Sure enough, a few moments more hissing
revealed the human form of Ether standing beside the cracked
obsidian husk that had once been her hand.

Caya turned to Deacon and Myranda.

“I would say that drinks are in order,” she
proclaimed.

Packs were emptied, producing a tent for
every few men and enough rations for perhaps one in three. As short
as the other supplies seemed to be, there was plenty of drink to go
around, as a fiery wine and an assortment of other spirits served
to settle nerves, warm blood, and dull pains. The soldiers first
clustered tightly about Myranda and Deacon, eager to share tales of
battle and triumph. They soon found themselves in a wide, cautious
circle around the heroes. Myn, it turned out, had had quite enough
excitement for one day and was slow to trust so large a group of
strangers. As such, she took a seat beside them and cast a
threatening look at any who ventured too close. With a bit of
effort, Deacon managed to raise the spell necessary to shelter them
from the worst of the storm once more.

Ivy looked about uneasily from her seat
beside her friends. The eyes of the soldiers seemed to be
scrutinizing she and the dragon in particular. Ether took up a
position among the flames, which caused a bit of a stir, but once
the exclamation and surprise had dulled, the eyes turned back to
their steady circuit between Ivy and Myn. She felt something was
expected of her. Suddenly a thought struck her.

“Deacon! Do you have my violin?” she
asked.

“I believe so,” he said, poking around in his
bag until he was able to produce it.

Ivy snatched it and the bow away from him and
quickly struck up a tune. After the initial shock of yet another
unexpected truth, the music began to take effect. The feeling came
back to Ivy's fingers as they danced nimbly over the strings, the
joy of playing filling her soul, and bathing those around her in a
warm golden aura. The happiness was infectious, no doubt aided by
strong wine on empty stomachs, and before long grizzled soldiers
were clapping along, and the youngest among them were dancing. As
the joy spread, the pain and strain of the day melted away.
Injuries and aches that had lingered for years, pains that had
simply become a fact of life, wafted away along with fatigue and
sorrow. For a time Caya and Tus watched with satisfaction as their
soldiers rejoiced, but before long their curiosities got the better
of them.

“Not entranced . . . “ Tus said flatly as he
and Myn exchanged hard stares.

“No, just a friend,” Myranda said, using the
strength brought by Ivy's influence to speed its effects on Myn as
Deacon did the same for Lain. “Why would you think she was
entranced?”

“The trouble with getting information quickly
is its tendency to become a bit mangled during the trip,” Caya
explained. “We had all assumed such was the case with the images
the Alliance had distributed. Who would have thought the Red Shadow
was really a malthrope as they said. It stands to reason,
certainly, but one wouldn't imagine a monster like that being
clever enough to avoiding capture for so long.”

Ivy hit a sour note and stopped, glaring at
Caya.

“The tales about malthropes have had more
than their share of mangling as well, I can assure you,” Myranda
said.

“Er, yes, so it would seem. No harm meant,”
Caya said.

With a satisfied nod, Ivy commenced her
playing

“I don't think they fed him at all. Lain is
going to need food when he awakes,” Deacon said to no one in
particular.

The words hit Myn like an order and she
sprinted into the whipping snow on greatly restored legs to fetch a
meal.

“Try to bring back enough for all of us!”
Myranda called after her speeding friend.

“Just a friend . . . “ Tus said
doubtfully.

Myranda looked over Lain, finally satisfied
that all that could be done had been done. Her mind released from
its most pressing concern, she decided the time had come to indulge
her curiosities.

“Deacon, what happened to you? Where did they
take you? How did you escape?” Myranda asked.

“Yes, I'd say you can spare a few moments to
share the details now,” Caya encouraged.

“It was nothing, really. More their oversight
than my action. They'd taken me to a small outpost. Demont wanted
to retrieve both halves of Ivy's crystal, but finding something in
my bag is difficult, so he wanted me alive until it could be found,
just in case killing me would keep it from them forever. When he
left, I realized that they had taken all of my equipment, but they
hadn't taken my ring. I tried to get it off, but one of the nearmen
caught me. Apparently he was under orders to confiscate any sort of
mystic paraphernalia, because he actually removed the ring
for
me once he discovered it. The shackles were ideal for
restraining hands. It would appear that they were woefully
inadequate for restraining first a cluster of tentacles, then a
three fingered talon, then a variety of other disturbing forms it
managed to take before I located the ring and put it back on the
first form that had a roughly finger sized protrusion,” Deacon
explained.

“Eh, what's that? Tentacles?” Caya said,
confused.

“It is really quite fascinating. You see, I
had a bit of an accident involving chaos magic, and now it would
appear that the natural state of my hand is to exist at some sort
of variable probabilistic displacement from the norm that causes it
to leap from one staggeringly unlikely configuration to another
unless manually maintained at a more typical status,” Deacon said
enthusiastically.

“That was supposed to be an explanation, was
it?” Caya said.

“Because of a miscast spell, his hand changes
shapes unless he wears the ring,” Myranda offered.

“Ah,” Caya nodded.

“I thought I'd just said that . . . well, at
any rate, I realized that you were moving far too quickly to catch
up to, and that things were getting out of hand. Caya turned out to
be fairly nearby, so I sought her help,” Deacon finished.

“And the portal?” Myranda asked.

“Oh, yes. Desmeres tracked us down and
provided us with some weapons and a good deal of literature about
the D'karon's methods. They provided details enough to allow me to
manipulate the entrances of their portals, once they were opened.
The exit cannot be moved, it seems. Something about the target
requiring an actively maintained focus,” he added, pausing for a
moment of thought before adding. “Curious that there was no
backlash when the portal closed. The notes indicated that there
would be. Perhaps repositioning the entrance spilled off the
surplus energy, or perhaps it happened on the other side due to . .
. “

“Right, that's enough of that,” Caya said,
cutting off what she had already learned was sure to be a labyrinth
of terms and concepts no sane person would understand.

“Oh, uh . . . I stole their portal. I made it
lead here,” he clarified.

“Right, stick to explanations like that,”
Caya said.

Distantly there came the thunder of returning
footsteps. Myn burst into the region of relative calm afforded by
Deacon's spell. She was plastered with snow, her jaws stretched to
their limit around what was likely the better part of a herd of
deer. She dropped them near the fire and proceeded to pelt all
around her with caked snow shaken from her head and neck. The
complaints of soldiers wiping snow from mouths and eyes were
quickly silenced by Myn's angry glare. Some of the more courageous
soldiers attempted to help themselves to the kill, but Myn
resisted, snapping at grasping hands.

“Myn! Be nice!” Ivy said, ducking beneath the
protective creature to snag her share.

At Myranda's insistence Myn finally relented,
but not before snatching up a hearty portion to place beside Lain.
She then plopped to the ground and moodily watched the rest divided
up among the soldiers as a larger fire was built. Myranda took a
seat beside Myn, the dragon placing its head in her lap and
unfurling a wing to lay over Lain.

“Thank you very much, Myn. That was very kind
of you,” Myranda praised as she stroked the faithful beast's
head.

Caya looked on in astonishment. She turned.
Here her men cooked a meal provided by a dragon. There the flame
complained and stepped away, becoming a woman. All around them a
vicious blizzard raged while seemingly ignoring them. At the edge
of this calm was a monstrous dragoyle head in the grip of a massive
stone hand.

“Things are moving in curious directions,”
she said, slowly processing the experiences of the day. “Half of me
feels as though we are in over our heads. The other half is trying
to figure out how to bring that monster's head home as a trophy.
This is bigger than a war, isn't it? This . . . this is the
prophesy, the work of fate. What else could bring such creatures
together? You have my full support, of course. The call has gone
out. My men will be rallying near the capital. They will help you
in any way they can. That leaves us with two wizards, a dragon, two
malthropes, a shape shifter, and a few dozen soldiers to assault
the most heavily fortified city in the world against the generals,
an endless supply of their men, and likely the people of the city
itself. The scales are tipped, but the real question is, in what
favor?”

When the food was finished cooking, the
Chosen and soldiers alike feasted. The raging snow diminished
slowly, finally to the point that Deacon's protection was no longer
called for. As the warriors grew more comfortable with the Chosen
and more deeply inebriated, questions were asked and stories were
told, Deacon scribbling madly to record them all. Only Ether and
Myn avoided the curiosity of the newcomers, each taking a place
beside Lain and weathering the questions and stares in silence. The
sun was beginning to appear again by the time the group sought to
retire. The Undermine divided themselves among the available tents
until only one remained.

“Take it with my blessings,” Caya said,
holding the flap open.

“I couldn't. By rights it is yours and . . .
“ Myranda began.

“We can argue about this, but I assure you,
it is a waste of time. You'll find me rather obstinate on the
subject,” Caya said with a grin. “Besides, Tus here tried to give
his
tent up to for Lain, but the dragon wouldn't allow it.
Surely you wouldn't want
both
of us to be denied.”