Authors: Benjamin Tate
Well of Sorrows (85 page)
But it would take care of the pain . . . for a price.
Moiran glared at him. “You can’t stop this. You can’t halt the fighting. One man—”
“You’re right,” he interrupted. “I can’t end the battle . . . but there’s one man who can. And I can convince him. But I can’t do it from here.”
Her glare intensified—
And then, in a low, curt, bitter tone, she said, “Men.”
She removed the cap.
The scent of the Lifeblood flooded the tent, a hundred times stronger than before, and Colin gasped, his entire body trembling now, the ache in his stomach almost as strong as the pain in his chest.
“Let me have it.”
Moiran handed the flask to him reluctantly. He held it reverentially before him, let its power wash over him, soothe him.
Then, with one quick gesture, he tipped it into his mouth, felt its coolness against his tongue, tasted its sweetness, its pureness—
And then he swallowed.
Nothing happened.
Aeren watched, tension bleeding down his arms, tightening across his shoulders, as Lotaern kept his arms raised.
And then the acolytes behind him began to move.
They fanned out, each group of four heading out from Lotaern’s position, radiating outward, like the rays of the sun. When they were fifty paces from the edge of the fighting, the groups of four broke apart, each acolyte facing the chaos of the lines. Each drew his cattan, nearly in unison, and Aeren realized that Lotaern was issuing orders. He could see the Chosen’s mouth moving, but the battle itself drowned out his words.
The acolytes held their cattans to the sky, then reversed them and drove their points into the ground with both hands on the hilts, kneeling as they did so, heads bowed.
“What are they doing?” Eraeth asked.
Aeren shook his head, lips pursed.
Lotaern was still speaking. Aeren strained, tried to make out what was being said, but it was Eraeth who answered his own question.
“He’s chanting.”
“What?”
Eraeth stilled, drew and held a breath, concentrating. “Part of the Scripts.”
“They’re all chanting,” Aeren said abruptly. “They’re all chanting the same thing.”
Aeren felt it on the air first. A cessation of the winds, a silence beneath the rumbling roar of the fighting still taking place on all sides. Then the air . . . thickened. It pressed in around him, made it harder to breathe.
But even as this began to register, the ground trembled. Tremors coursed up through Aeren’s boots, shuddered through his feet into his legs, low at first, increasing steadily, until they couldn’t be ignored. On all sides, those at the edges of the fighting halted, stepped back, glanced around in confusion—
And the earth in front of the kneeling acolytes suddenly exploded skyward. Mud boiled, spewing up chunks of sod, clumps of dirt and roots and trampled grass, seething upward in a huge arc, as if something were trying to emerge from the ground itself, trying to shove its way free. Aeren caught glimpses of what lay beneath the churning surface: a white glow, vibrant and intense, so pure it hurt his eyes. The earth continued to fountain for a breath, two—
Then it began to push outward, away from the acolytes who still knelt, still chanted, heads bent. It plowed forward, mud and dirt erupting like geysers, shooting ten feet into the air, like spume from the ocean as it struck the rocky shore. It surged forward like the swell of a wave, rumbling through Aeren’s legs and up into his chest, juddering in his teeth.
The human men who had broken through the Alvritshai lines were caught by surprise, too stunned and confused to move. The boiling earth knocked them off of their feet, buried most beneath heaps of dirt, their screams cut short. Before each of them vanished, Aeren saw a tongue of that brilliant whiteness beneath the ground lick out, touch the person an instant before he was engulfed, as if tasting them. Then the arcing wave of moving earth reached the first Alvritshai. It flung them to the ground, but didn’t bury them, leaving them behind, shaken, struggling to rise.
“It’s Aielan’s Light,” Eraeth said suddenly. “The whiteness beneath the earth—it’s Aielan’s Light.”
Aeren’s brow creased skeptically—
But those Alvritshai near them had already heard. They whispered it beneath their breath, muttered prayers, gestured in awe, the reaction spreading outward.
On the field, the raging earth hit the most crowded parts of the battle, and at the same moment the acolytes rose from where they knelt, jerked their cattans free from the earth and pointed them toward the sky, and roared, “For Aielan! For the Order! For the Flame!”
Everyone in Aeren’s vicinity gasped.
The acolytes’ blades were limned with white light.
They rushed into the earth’s wake, pausing to kill any of the human forces who hadn’t been buried, their motions quick, merciless, hitting throat or heart before sprinting onward, into the heart of the fighting.
But the fighting had lurched to a halt, both Alvritshai and human forces stunned, even as the disturbed earth bore down on them. Some shook the shock off and began to run, fleeing toward their own lines or simply fleeing before the earth and the white light beneath. Many of the Alvritshai heard the acolytes’ war cry. To either side, Aeren felt his own men rallying, saw hands tightening on hilts, eyes hardening from shock to anger.
Thrusting his own cattan into the air, he bellowed, “For Aielan! For Rhyssal!”
And then he charged toward the nearest group of the Legion, whose attention was fixed on the approaching ridge of earth. His leg burned with pain from the knife wound and being twisted in the death of his horse, but Aeren killed two of the Legionnaires before they began to react, a few bringing swords to bear, still others breaking away toward the west. Aeren felt the writhing earth bearing down on him, felt the Legion he fought growing desperate—
And then it struck.
He was lifted off the ground, thrown by the force of the earth. Dirt pummeled him from all sides, flung so high and with such force that he could taste it. He breathed it in, choked and coughed on it, felt something lick up along his leg, felt its cold touch, felt it burning against his skin, recognized it as Aielan’s Light, as the same fire he had passed through to earn his pendant in the Order. Visions of that moment, of descending into the heart of the mountain beneath Caercaern, of traversing the empty halls and corridors, of marveling at the massive pillars, the carved stonework, the delicate stone stairs, flashed through his mind. But this was merely a taste of what he’d endured when he’d reached the final chamber, deeper even than the halls, hidden within the rough hewn catacombs below the ancient city where the pool of white fire blazed. There, he had submerged himself in the fire, allowed it to consume him, allowed himself to be exposed completely to Aielan and her judgment—
Then he was falling. He struck the ground hard, tumbled onto his side, spitting grit from his mouth, scrubbing it from his face. Alvritshai were coughing and hacking on all sides, a few groaning, holding their arms or legs where they’d twisted them on landing. Aeren dragged himself to his feet, wincing at the renewed pain in his leg, fresh blood staining his breeches, but he stumbled toward where a young human boy lay half buried in the sod, blood trickling from one corner of his mouth.
He never saw Aeren coming. His eyes were wide, staring off into the distance, tears streaming down his face, as he murmured, “I shouldn’t have taken the coin from Codger. I shouldn’t have taken the cart.”
Aeren hesitated.
A blade sank into the boy’s chest and Aeren spun.
Eraeth withdrew his cattan and met Aeren’s accusing glare stoically. “The battle isn’t over.” He motioned toward the plains behind them.
The wave of earth and white light had diminished. As Aeren watched, it threw up a few fitful geysers, as if it were gasping a last breath, and then it rumbled into stillness.
He glanced back at Lotaern in time to see the Chosen, arms still lifted, stagger, then fall, body crumpling.
Turning back, he gazed beyond where the earth had finally settled . . . and saw the remains of the Legion reserve. Hundreds of men, on foot and in the saddle, waiting for the order to attack. To the side, from the Tamaell Presumptive’s position, Alvritshai and Legion were picking themselves up and dusting themselves off.
Including King Stephan.
The leader of the coastline Provinces spat to one side, wiped his mouth on his sleeve, sword still clutched tight in his other hand . . . and then he gestured.
A lone runner raised a single flag and began waving it back and forth.
And the reserve unit began to move.
Colin stood on the ridge above the Alvritshai encampment overlooking the field of battle. The dwarren stood to one side, their lines withdrawn, disengaged, although they were riled. The Legion and Alvritshai forces were in disarray, no clear lines on either side, men and Alvritshai pulling themselves up from the ground, horns beginning to sound, everyone beginning to regroup even as the Legion reserves charged toward the battle.
He’d arrived in time to witness the wave of earth, had seen it toss the Alvritshai and the Legion aside like stones as it rippled across the plains, then dissipated. He’d felt the power the acolytes had called thrumming through his feet, had felt it tingling in his skin and vibrating through him, in counterpoint to the pure ecstasy of the Lifeblood throbbing in his veins. The pain from the knife wound in his chest had receded, had become nothing more than a minor nuisance, an occasional tug that made him wince if he twisted or turned too fast or too sharply. The exhaustion that lay underneath the pain had also vanished, replaced by euphoria. He breathed in the plains air, tasted it, savored it, felt the coppery taste of blood against his tongue from the death below. He touched the desperation, the sweat, and the terror of the men who fought there, soft as silk, and reveled in the sounds of the horns, the shouts, the thunder of running feet, each distinct and brittle in his ears. Each breath, each heartbeat, each movement pricked his skin, tickling in the hairs at the base of his neck and along his arms. He bathed in the sensation, knowing it would cost him in the end, in the darkness of the mark on his arm, in the claiming of his soul by the Well, but he didn’t care.
The price was small. Nearly infinitesimal.
With the battlefield wrapped around him, he focused, picked out the banners of the Tamaell Presumptive, the pennants of the King of the Provinces, and then he reached out—
And halted time.
Picking his way down from the slope, he crossed the stilled battlefield, slid past individuals fighting to the death, around groups no more organized than a brawl, past horses in mid- rear, men falling, hands outstretched to catch themselves, unaware that they were already dead. He wound through splashes of blood frozen in midair, ducked beneath swords in full swing. He made his way through it all.
Until he stood before a single individual, the man he’d come to speak to, the man he’d come to convince:
King Stephan.
He peered into the King’s face, into his gray-green eyes, locked on his opponent, expression fierce as he prepared to drive his sword through an Alvritshai’s heart. He could feel the man beneath, could feel the vibrant energy of his life, even though everything was still, motionless.
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