The Children of Urdis (Grimwold and Lethos Book 2) (26 page)

Raising his hand, Tirkin began to gather wind around it. Lethos felt its swirling power. "Wait! You're not going to blow him away? This is his hall."

"He has no business with us," Tirkin said.

"Lethos is right," Storra said. "Let us not mistreat our host. I'm certain he will afford us our privacy."

Blund apparently mistook Tirkin's raised hand as a greeting, for he mounted the mud-slick hill with his own hand raised in greeting. He climbed through the rain to meet them, oblivious to the threat he had just avoided. Rain poured off his hood as he gave all of them a smooth smile. The three guards huddled behind him as if he could block the rain. Whatever magical shelter Tirkin and Storra had produced against the weather, they did not extend it to Blund.

"Lightning struck my hall, and two people appeared from it. Is this true? How many more wonders will I witness in my day!" Blund's smile did not falter at Tirkin's constant frown and Storra's silence. His eyes slid past them and landed on Lethos, as if expecting an answer.

"These are friends," he said. "They've come to help me."

Blund's face became the brightest spot in the rain-sodden gray. "Help you! Why, Redfingers will be driven into the sea for sure." He looked to Valda with a smile splitting his face. "With such help, all of Valahur will certainly call you High Queen."

"High Queen?" Valda's face grew paler.

"We do not involve ourselves in the squabbles of mortals," Tirkin said. "We will use your hall now."

Blund's good humor blew out like a candle in a storm, but before he could unleash his indignation, Storra smoothed him over. "Do not grow angry. We will not linger on your hospitality. Leave us to the hall, please."

There it was again. Lethos knew she was using the same powers Grimwold possessed, only with far more grace and precision. Blund's eyes snapped to hers as if he had been grabbed by the chin and forced to look. He nodded his agreement, but Lethos saw the confusion in his eyes. The men behind him were already stumbling away. Storra gave Lethos a faint grin and gathered them all toward the hall as Blund left without further argument. The guard at the door slipped away, fading into the sheeting rain.

Once inside the hall, the servants all backed up or disappeared. A black iron pot sat in the middle of the hall, abandoned by the boy who had used it for a prop to shirk his duties. Lethos stood in front of Storra.

"You have the same power that Grimwold uses."

Her smile deepened. "I am but an echo, capable of small commands. I have just had centuries of practice. Your Prime, Grimwold, is the true master of such power. When he finally learns the nuance of his abilities, he will be the most potent of our people."

Her smile was pleasant, almost motherly. She was an ageless beauty who stood just taller than Lethos. Her silver wolf fur cape fell aside and revealed a generous body wrapped in a blue dress. It was torn in places about her waist, and she quickly pulled the cloak tighter. Pink touched her high cheeks.

"Where is Grimwold?" Tirkin asked. He was surveying the hall as if he stood atop a crest overlooking a battlefield. Lethos half expected battle horns to sound after the question. He stepped between them.

"In that room. Look, Tirkin, Turo said you would help us out. Grimwold is--I don't know what he is. He was shot in the chest by a stone arrowhead made from the place of his birth. The storm riders had something to do with it."

"Storm riders?" Tirkin asked. He was already moving toward the room Lethos had indicated.

"They came in a big white ship. Turo sank it. A man called Avulash was the captain, quite a bastard."

Storra raised her brow at Lethos's comments but said nothing. She followed Tirkin.

Valda stood beside the door of her room, hand resting on the hilt of her sword and casting a wary look at Lethos. If only they could touch minds as he and Grimwold could do. He'd make her understand that no matter how awkward this Tirkin fellow was, they needed him. If she could just feel how desperate he was for answers, she wouldn't be making suspicious faces and narrowing her eyes at Storra as she slid past her. Maybe it was just female jealousy. After all, Valda probably had never encountered any woman to rival her looks before Storra arrived. Lethos thought of all the lovely women at the courts of Naleos. They would kill their rivals if they thought them better looking. Wasn't that how all royal women acted?

Valda grabbed his arm as he followed the pair into the room then pulled him aside. "Those two are nothing like you and Grimwold. They're wrong."

"They're just foreigners, and probably ancient. That's all."

"The woman controls minds. All her words come with barbs. Did you feel it when she ordered Blund?"

Lethos glanced inside the room. Both Tirkin and Storra were leaning over Grimwold's prone body. Tirkin lifted away the blanket. Unless they were nearly deaf, they would hear everything. Lethos nodded to Valda's question.

"You've not seen Grimwold's work yet. He can force friends to murder each other. Turo and Kafara became giant eagles and tore men to shreds with their talons. Don't be so quick to judge what is good or bad in the power."

He left her scowling at the door, and went to Grimwold's bedside. Blanket folded open, Grimwold's naked chest was white and sweaty under the low light of the flickering lamps. The incision Turo had made to extract the arrowhead was a red and raised line amid a swirl of an inky stain. It hurt Lethos's chest just to look upon it.

"What made that mark?" he asked. "Was it the stone?"

Both Tirkin and Storra shared a long stare. Lethos wondered how much they said to each other in the privacy of their own thoughts. Did he and Grimwold look like this to other people? It was unsettling to see reactions flickering on their faces to words not spoken aloud. No wonder Grimwold's men shrank away when he and Lethos communicated with their minds. It was weird to behold.

"There is other magic at work here," Tirkin said. "Both of you will need to work together to fight it."

"Of course," Lethos's heart beat harder. Answers at last!

"We will not waste time. We start now." Tirkin reached into a pouch hidden beneath his silver wolf fur cape. He withdrew a wood container wrapped in leather and stoppered with cord and antler. He pulled the stopper and extended the wood flask to him.

"You must prepare yourself. Drink this."

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Avulash stood atop the highest tower of what the humans had called Norddalr. His vision stretched farther than it ever had before. The mists had rolled back again and now more of lost Sathkera revealed itself to his sight. Black smudges of islands dotted the horizon. He would laugh with joy had he not been so bone weary. The wind was strong at this height, blowing across the peaks of mountains that ensconced this ancient stronghold. Leaning over the side, he surveyed the ruined courtyard below where he had fought the Minotaur and the princess. He clenched his teeth at the memory of their battle aboard the ark.

His arm still throbbed with pain. Even after absorbing more blood and allowing his seeker, Sharatar, to place healing runes upon it, it still had not completely returned to normal. He rubbed it as he monitored his slaves below. The giant he had created--a child's toy, really; with time and a proper place to work he would create true art--struggled to pull the cart into the small courtyard. Avulash's slaves swarmed around the cart and pushed with all their might. They were a jumble of red and black ants around the lumbering giant. The rest of Avulash's crew awaited at the foot of the tower. The diffuse light bounced off their shell-shaped shields as they waited.

The Minotaur and the princess notwithstanding, all had gone according to plan. The ark was now hobbled, the breach of its hull too large to patch and not worth the expenditure of magic to repair. It had delivered them to the shallows before the keel sank into the ocean muck. The journey was over now and the Manifested had struck him too late to avail them anything. Once the beacon was set, his king and the best of his people would feel its pull across the endless mists. Their white arks would return and the world would be united under the Tsal once more.

The giant pushed the cart into place and staggered back from it like a drunk. Avulash considered reclaiming its blood for something more useful, but for now he let the giant live. The slaves gibbered and fawned beneath him. How lucky they were to be here for this moment.

"My brothers, it is time to seat the wild stone once more upon our holy towers." Avulash's voice silenced the slaves like scared puppies. His crew, however, turned their smiling faces up to him. He extended his right arm, the tight pain of his healing wound pulling against it. "Together we will raise it, and I alone will unveil it. Take a look about you now. You see naught but dead and empty halls, devoid of life and of nobility. Once our mighty beacon pulses again, these halls will be teeming with our brethren."

The six crew still remaining with him cheered. Their voices were thin against the high wind, but raised Avulash's spirits nonetheless. The rest of his crew would return soon with their reclaimed wisdom, and would add their voices to the chorus. Avulash gave a fatherly smile to his crew.

"We have endured the centuries at sea, lost in the fog, only the pulse of wild stone to sustain us. Holy Urdis, maligned by his kin but beloved of his people, never left our side. Today is proof of his promise that one day we would return from the injustice visited upon us. Today is that day. Let us raise the stone and bring our beacon to life."

His men cheered, and Avulash felt a hot wetness upon his cheeks. How long for this moment? The centuries could not be counted. The glory his people owed him, the sweet vengeance they would take, all would trace back to this moment in the endless flow of time.

Today.

Silence fell. The slaves backed toward the wall while the giant stood like a child fascinated by fire. Avulash extended both palms, feeling the coursing pulse of magic in the air. The power of his enriched blood burned beneath his skin, more pleasing than a soft woman against his flesh. Beneath him the crew did the same, and in unison they spoke their ancient words of power. Words and blood pulled together to create what Avulash envisioned. It was as if he shaped flesh, only this was pure force. A hand that none could see but for Avulash's heart-eye engulfed the cart.

He refined his mental grip. Not the cart, but the object it carried. The massive chunk of wild stone had come all the way from Sathkera, bestowed to his ark by the king himself. It was encased now in a shroud of copper fashioned into the shape of a giant clam. His people's closeness to the sea showed in all their craftsmanship. Avulash's body grew warmer as he and his crew willed the copper clamshell into the air.

It hovered over the cart, dipped and faltered much as if a true hand manipulated it skyward. Even as the wind gusted across it, the copper shell floated steadily higher until it was even with Avulash's brow. The glint of the sun winked on the time-smoothed edges. How long ago had artisans burnished this copper shroud to its finish? Avulash's wandering thought caused it to waver and tilt. Steadying the shell, he directed it onto the center of the tower. The ancient patterns on the stone floor were still barely discernible underneath centuries of dirt and wear. He knew exactly where to set it, and it clanked into place.

Releasing his will, he fell back against the edge of the tower. Heat fled his body, leaving him momentarily chilled as it always did after blood magic. Below, his crew cheered again. Avulash licked his lips.

Once the clamshell was opened, the Manifested would no longer be a concern of his. All of this island would be flooded with enough magical force to destroy their kind. Though they thrived on magic like the Tsal, the inferior, degenerate Manifested could not handle much of it. They had to share it between pairs just to manage it, and if fed too much they died from it. Just as mortal men needed water to live, yet if submerged in it too long the water would kill them. The Manifested were the same with magic. This much wild stone would surely drown any of them.

Avulash still had the Order of Phyros to concern him. The princess had shown herself as a paladin as well, but she seemed unaware. Perhaps she was not the true heir. She had no sword of the Order. The location of that sword vexed him, but it was one weapon and only one hand could wield it. The Order of Phyros had apparently died out during the Tsal's long absence. Perhaps the Order thought the Tsal forever banished, or they lost the favor of Phyros himself. He did not care. In mere moments nothing would be able to stop him or the Tsal.

He set his thin hands upon the cold copper, feeling its smooth edges glide beneath his palms. He found the latching mechanism and placed both hands upon the wheel. Closing his eyes, he allowed himself to savor the moment.

Then he cranked the wheel. It stuck, and he was careful not to pull too hard lest he wrench the mechanism. When he had opened the shell during the fight aboard his ark. he had been so hasty as to have nearly snapped off the wheel. Now it turned smoothly.

The clamshell pinged as it released, and a dark line appeared around the center edge. He continued to turn the wheel and the clamshell opened, as smooth and quiet as if it had only been constructed yesterday.

The pulsing wild stone revealed in the flat light of the day. Its black iridescence played with the light, swirling colors over its surface.

The clamshell popped open, and Avulash pulled away the fully opened top. It was too bulky to handle on his own, and with a little less taste than he had desired, he guided it to clang on the ground.

Magical radiance burst in every direction. Standing so close to it, he felt it prickle his skin. His body swelled with power, and he felt himself straighten. His bones hardened and his muscled bulked. A weariness to which he had so long accustomed himself vanished.