Chronicles of Gilderam: Book One: Sunset (40 page)

“This world shall live to see the dawn of a second Dark Age,” she said unequivocally. “It shall be far more terrible than the first, and it shall reign over Vuora without hope of an end.”

“Without end?” Owein said. “What makes you think the gods will let Thuldarus rule their world? Why shouldn’t they stop him, like they did before?”

The edges of her mouth curled into a devilish grin.

“Why don’t you ask your friend?” she said.

Owein turned to Jerahd.

“She is right,” he said quietly, rising from the chair. “According to the Scriptures, the gods have promised Mankind that should they ever dare to reawaken Feth again, and should he free Thuldarus for a second time, they would… abandon us. The whole world… left for Thuldarus to do with as he wills, until the end of time. That is to be their final punishment for our blasphemy and ingratitude.”

Wide-eyed, Owein slowly turned back to the Empress. Her glee had returned, signaled by an impish smile. It looked like she was trying to suppress a laugh, but it broke free, first as a juicy chuckle, then a shrill cackle.

Shazahd threw open the door to the bridge. The sight inside stole her breath away.

The ballista bolt had come through the window at an angle, and was lodged low in the wall where the navigation table had been. She could see one of Semith’s legs from under the bolt. Reeth was still in his chair, splayed over it limply, with hunks of glass protruding from his face and chest. Weiden lay under the helm console in a pool of blood, and Vrei and Cavada were both unconscious on the floor behind the wheel. Jaes was nowhere to be found.

“Captain!” Shazahd rattled her body. “Captain! Wake up! Vrei….”

There was no response.

Cavada’s body, crumpled at the base of the binnacle, began to stir.

“Cavada!” She rushed to help him. “Can you hear me? Cavada, are you okay?”

“Huh…? Yeah. Yeah, I’m…” and he let out a painful groan.

“I think you’re hurt,” she said. He writhed in stilted, jerky movements, unable to sit himself up.

“I think you’re right.”

“Your arm’s broken.”

Cavada’s eyes lit up, and after a couple blinks he appeared to be lucid. His good arm grabbed Shazahd and she pulled him into a sitting position. He looked around the bridge.

“Where’s Jaes? Oh,
mlec
, he left to help in the engine room.” His eyes found Shazahd. “You…. You’ve got to fly the ship!”

“Me…? But, I… I can’t fly this by myself!”

“You’ve got to, Shazahd.
Gweith
,
there’s no one left. I’ll help you.”

He cringed as he scooted himself backward and found the wall for support. 

“First,” he said. “We’re going way too fast. You’ll need to go readjust that dial, there,” he pointed to the helm controls. “Just squeeze the handle and – Shazahd, are you listening?”

Her eyes were wide with fear.

“Yes…! Yes. I’m listening.”

He looked right into her eyes. “Shazahd, you
have
to fly the ship. There is no one else.”

She nodded. He noticed moisture building in her eyes, and tried to ignore it.

“Just squeeze the handle, pull it all the way down, then reset it to Ahead Full. Okay? Can you do that?”

She nodded again and left for the console in front of the shattered window. She had to shield her face from the violent gust blowing through it as she followed his instructions.

“On second thought,” Cavada added from behind, “better make it Half. You’re just learning after all.” He smiled through the pain, and she did her best to smile back. A moment later, they heard the bell ring.

“Good,” said Cavada. “That means the engine room has got the order.” They felt the ship begin to slow down. The bridge became less of a wind tunnel.

“Now come over here to the wheel.” She did. “Spin it – as hard as you can – to your right. We’ve got to turn all the way around.”

“We’re going back?”

“Of course. We wouldn’t want to miss all the fun, would we?”

“All right,” said Audim. “Listen up!”

The elder clerics perked.

“If we concentrate together,” he said, “all at once, and focus the sacred power of the Tree right at the source itself… then we might have a chance at breaking the Empress’ spell.”

The elders furrowed their wrinkly brows.

“Dear young prince,” one of them said in a somber baritone. “Not in ten thousand years has the Tree been used for what you’re asking.”

“I know – I
know!
But we don’t have an alternative.”

“It is against the Code,” objected another.

“A clear violation of our strictures!”

“Unthinkable!”

“There’s no guarantee that it would work,” said someone else. “And – even if it did – we’d be opening ourselves up to her magic. We’d be left vulnerable, exposed.”

“We don’t even know what kind of sorcery we’re dealing with! Perhaps this is exactly what they’re hoping for!”

“Gentlemen, please,” said Audim. “
Gentlemen!
”

They were silenced. Audim listened to his own voice echo all the way up the chamber of the Sanctum and back down again. He noticed now that he was no longer alone with the elders. More elves had entered the Sanctum – hundreds more. They spread out along the encircling bench all the way up to the top, and beyond, where he couldn’t see. And they were watching him.

Audim exhaled all of his breath. They had come to find refuge, to flee. They were losing the battle outside, and these elves had no other hope, nowhere else to go. They came here to pray.

And more entered still.

Was there no one left fighting?

Audim leveled his gaze at the elders.

“I know what I am asking. Believe me, I do not take this lightly. But we are elves of the forest.” Audim looked up to the elves all around him. “We are Divaran!” he shouted, and his voice rang throughout the cavern. “We are the Called Upon! It falls to us to decide the outcome of this battle… and to decide the fate of the world. At this very moment, Aelmuligo lights our way from the heavens. The gods are watching. We cannot fail them. If we do nothing… we will all surely perish. When the Inner City falls, Vuora falls with her. Please. I beg you. We must try.”

His eyes pleaded with the elders. One at a time, their wills faltered beneath the weight of his determination and they looked away from him.

“Will you help me?” he asked. “It is the only way.”

“Very well,” one of them said at last. “…For the Quill and Scroll.”

“For the Quill and Scroll!” the others joined.

“For the Quill and Scroll!” erupted the Sanctum of Shadow in unison.

“We are the Called Upon,” Audim declared. “And now… we answer.”

He and the elders formed another circle around the altar. They closed their eyes and titled their heads back once more. The other elves in the cavern did likewise, joining hands from the top of the Sanctum to the bottom. The song of the heartroot exploded in their ears, intensifying until it reached a staggering volume, belting with supernatural gusto.

The root ignited, and green light flared like a sun inside the chamber. Incredible heat spilled over them in a continuous a wave. Elves jerked and spasmed under the strain of their magic. Sweat beaded on their brows. Some fell to their knees, but they held their hands fast.

Audim’s necklace was a tiny star floating in front of his face.

The Empress abruptly quit laughing.

“Oh,” she said softly to herself. “That’s not….”

She stared into nowhere. Owein and Jerahd watched curiously as she held one hand out in front of her, as though reaching for something. But there was nothing there. They could plainly read the worry – or was it dread? – all over her face.

Then her lips tightened and her eyes narrowed. Her feminine beauty transformed into something sinister and terrifying.

“Those
jefethum
…” she snarled. Then she stomped closer to the door of the conning tower. “Bring us to
ramming speed!
” she screamed.

An attendant ran faithfully into the ship.

There was a brief pause. Sraia noticed Owein and Jerahd’s perplexity. Before they could say anything, a sharp rustling sound emanated from the forest. From their vantage point on the weather deck, they saw just a fraction of the true number of elvish bolts around them, freshly sprung from below.

And they could see hundreds upon hundreds.

Before they hit, Sraia Te Vama spun around to face the Inner City. They were so close – almost within firing range.

“No…!” the Empress breathed.

A carpet of missiles – dense as the forest itself – hit the armada in the belly. And there was no protection this time.

Wood crashed into wood. The oversized projectiles cracked hulls open like eggshells, and sailed straight on through their guts. Their innards poured out in waterfalls.

The powerful arrows plowed through storage bays, split apart decks, mangled crews’ quarters, and gouged varride balloons – skewering the ships en masse. They pulverized bulkheads along their unstoppable path, and snapped internal struts to splinters. They burst through engine rooms and forced apart the heavy machinery.

Boilers ruptured and exploded, shooting jets of steam down corridors and out windows. They punctured nexane tanks and smashed supporting girders. They rippled and overturned decks like throw rugs, uprooting whole weapons batteries.

They minced the Imperial fleet to rubble in the air.

Whole airships, shredded to ribbons in an instant, fell as broken bits into the trees below. In a single stroke, the mighty Gresadian navy was decimated. The only ships left in the air were the
Vacthor
and one, solitary battleship: the
Atrac Ainené.

The rest rained down in a shower of shrapnel, wreckage, smoke, and fire.

The
Vacthor’s
varride balloons were located on top, and so her sheer, unbelievable mass protected them from ground-based assault. This would keep her afloat until she had been completely gutted.

Her engines, severely wounded, rumbled in protest as her masters commanded her onward, toward the great tree, in the face of imminent destruction.

The
Atrac Ainené
struggled to accelerate as well, but being shallower, had sustained heavier damage from the ventral barrage. Its thick armor had saved it from annihilation, but now her bluesteel plates were crumpled and broken to pieces.

The
Vacthor
quaked from the elvish salvo, and everyone on board was thrown to the ground –
hard
. Before it had subsided Owein was on his feet, running for the Empress. Jerahd saw Tolora sprinting to intercept him, and he flung himself in the way.

Jerahd was nimble, and Tolora wasn’t paying attention, so he planted an airborne kick into his side that sent him flying.

Just as Sraia was picking herself up from the deck, Owein tackled her from behind at full speed. The two went rolling.

Most of the Imperial guardsmen arrayed around the weather deck had been thrown clear by the ship’s mighty lurch. The rest regained their balance as Owein, the Empress, Jerahd, and Tolora began fighting.

They weren’t armed, so it was a fistfight.

Owein was impressed by the Empress’ surprising skill and agility. She moved around his punches like a veteran boxer, and her own blows were backed with some serious force – far too much force, he thought, for a woman of her size.

Whenever he left a hole in his defenses, she was sure to send a kick through it, and on a couple occasions hit him right in his broken ribs. He screamed each time, inadvertently telling her just where to hurt him. He was sure he caught a glint of perverted pleasure in her eyes.

The bizarre fighting styles of Jerahd and Tolora were not without a comprehensive hand-to-hand combat component. They flipped and twirled and zipped around each other as chaotically as ever, throwing fists and feet and elbows and knees around the strangest angles.

Their blows were lightning-fast, and in such quick succession that sometimes their limbs would become hopelessly interlocked in a flurry of attacks and blocks, only to be unwound and rewound again in the next second. A few guards came to intervene, but opted instead to keep their distance, unsure how to insert themselves between the two gymnasts.

The ones who came to aid the Empress were halted by her own command.

“No!” she called. “Stay back! …He’s mine.”

“Sounds good to me,” Owein chided, and came in for a direct punch. She shunted it off course with a forearm, turning him around, and kicked him in the back. Her hardened-steel greave bashed his kidney and knocked him forward.

She tried to come down on his head with a spiked elbow next, but he turned back and lunged into her, ramming her gut with his shoulder. She rolled over backward on the deck, but hopped right back on her feet. She took a step and brought another kick to his chest.

Owein barely put his arms in the way in time to absorb the shock. Then he tried to swing with a left hook while she regained her balance. But she blocked that, then swatted his next combination of strikes out of the air. She brought a gauntlet to his stomach, another into his face, an elbow to the chest, and finished with a slow, calculated, powerful side-kick.

Dazed, Owein flew backward and landed on his back. 

Chancellor Eridanean couldn’t believe the orders coming from his own mouth.

“Sound the horns! Signal the evacuation! Sound the horns! The horns…!”

All around the Inner City, bellowing, booming bass notes told the elves that their home was doomed. There were no screams, no panic – just a hushed, orderly hurrying. The hundreds of thousands of residents scurried downward to the forest floor, or laterally to adjacent trees.