Elyon (11 page)

Boneheaded fool
. . . Marak could almost see his brother’s narrowed eyes, his crossed arms, his exasperation.

Not now. You mean not ever. And didn’t you make a promise to Darsal?
He’d forgotten. It was insignificant. But Darsal was right; he never should have let Sucrow take the girl.

That’s more like it.

Would you get out of my head?

I’m dead, brother.

Marak grunted, then turned his attention to the priest. “Sucrow, release Arya. Arya, ride with Josef, and the two of you take us down.”

“But she—”

“I said let her go!” Marak snapped.

A Shataiki had just attacked them and vanished into its lair. They were walking into hell. And the priest was still on his quest for power.

Sucrow untied Arya and allowed her to swing off the horse. Arya marched over to Josef and jumped up behind him. The priest growled and remounted. Marak ordered his commanders and the two Throaters to wait for them to return.

He gave Josef the word, and the three horses started down.

Josef took them around to a ledge with more slope to it and picked his way toward the creek. The lower they descended, the darker the forest became. Bat wings slapped around them, and the occasional pair of beady eyes glared through the trees. Sucrow began to chant softly, in words Marak didn’t understand.

Darsal slid her arm around his waist.

He took her hand and, in the darkness that now surrounded them all, kissed it lightly.

thirteen

J
ohnis led them downward in a spiral trajectory, like going down a drain or a whirlpool. Ever downward, into a pit. Into sewage and waste. Pitch-black trees with rotten, black leaves that curled. Even the grass and dirt were black. The canyon was perilous, and everything was obscenely still.

Deeper they went, the droplet shape narrowing with time, walls caving in around them. Darsal heard a dripping somewhere. A black waterfall.

“Elyon, save us,” she whispered.

A bat screeched overhead, underscoring her plea.

“Were you ever really alone, Darsal? Really?”
Elyon asked gently.

I’m alone now.

But that wasn’t true either.

Marak was here. Johnis and Silvie were alive. The rest of the Circle was alive somewhere.

As long as Johnis’s plan didn’t play out, they would stay that way. And right now she had no means of stopping him.

Except Elyon’s charge of love.

Would that be enough . . . ?

The forest taunted her. It closed in around her and groped at her, crushed her lungs. Sucrow was chanting somewhere, an incantation that sounded familiar to her, though she couldn’t remember where she’d heard such a hideous thing.

Thoughts of the last lair she’d crawled into clawed at her, mocked her.

They reached the bottom and followed a murky, stale stream until the path narrowed too much for the horses. Darsal didn’t want to leave the animals, but Marak had her tether all three, and they pressed on.

“You’re sure you know where you’re going?” she asked Johnis.

“I’m sure, albino,” he snapped.

“There are things stronger than amulets,” Darsal whispered back, ignoring his jibe. “Stronger than Leedhan and bats.”

Johnis didn’t respond. He led them on foot through thorny brush and thick, black mud, traveling along a streambed. Even Sucrow held his silence. All remained pensive and still. The stream rushed into a waterfall, and Johnis led them around the dark, bubbling water.

A shaman once had told Darsal that bodies of water were living things. They laughed and played along the shore. This water was different though. This water cackled like a villain about to take his prey as it spilled over a hillside and splashed into a cauldron below.

A shallow clearing opened up, creating a kind of bowl. Headstones rose up out of the water, wrapped in mist. In the middle of the small lake was a platform.

An eerie, purplish haze enveloped them. Darsal pressed against Marak, then remembered Cassak’s warning and shifted away. All around them the trees were weighed down by black bats with glowing red eyes and sharp claws and teeth.

Memories haunted her mind. She had to work to push them aside.

Johnis looked at Silvie, then Sucrow. “I need some water. And the rest. You’ve brought it?”

Sucrow nodded. He withdrew from his bag a silver bowl that Silvie took from him. She waded into the water. Next came a clay bowl and a small leather pouch. The priest began to chant.

Johnis took a silver knife from Sucrow; then they both followed Silvie out to the platform, their supplies held over their heads.

Darsal and Marak waited on the bank. Johnis couldn’t hear her. Darsal sank into a crouch and put her chin on her fists, elbows on her knees.

Bloody Leedhan.

Johnis stood sentinel, his face white, while Sucrow and Silvie made preparations. Silvie filled the silver bowl with water and placed it in the center. Sucrow took what looked like a makeshift altar and set it out. Incense soon wafted through the air and flooded their nostrils.

A nauseating stench. Where had she smelled that? The priest’s invocation continued, witnessed by hundreds of red-eyed Shataiki with visions of carnage in their heads.

What was Johnis doing? It was supposed to be a simple incantation.

Darsal could barely watch. So Johnis had needed Sucrow after all. Sucrow withdrew a bird with bound wings from a small cage she hadn’t seen earlier and killed it, pouring its blood over the altar. The bats swarming around them began to thrum.

Johnis placed the medallion around his neck in open view and waited for a signal from Sucrow. By his expression, something like terror had overtaken him, but was it his or the Leedhan’s?

Silvie took the knife from Sucrow. She would never relinquish it, Darsal knew. The slender, lithe woman looked more serpentine than ever and kept eying Sucrow as if judging the distance for a successful death throw.

Sucrow stopped chanting. He held aloft something silver and round in his right hand for the bats to see.

Johnis found his confidence and stood to one side of the altar. He puffed out his chest, raised his chin high, and spoke clipped words in a language Darsal didn’t recognize. He reached into his robe and withdrew a yellow, rotted, maggoty fruit that was bigger than his palm and held it at arm’s length in both hands.

The bats fell quiet.

“I come seeking audience with your guardian!” Johnis demanded of the Shataiki. “I come with a gift, should he desire such! Or is Derias a coward?”

Dissention and arguing rustled through the ranks.

A Shataiki twice the size of the others flapped overhead, circled, and swooped down onto the platform, landing directly across from Johnis before the altar, his wings partly folded.

“Who comes to my home?” the beast asked. His eyes didn’t leave the fruit. He ran his long, pink tongue over his black lips and sneered. “So you survived. And returned.”

Johnis raised his chin. He started to change. To turn completely transparent. His eyes took on the purple gaze. Lips curled into a wicked sneer. Animallike.

The Leedhan.

Even Silvie looked unnerved by his behavior. Derias made a coughing sound that was probably a laugh. His eyes narrowed and brightened. “Then you understand the danger.”

“I concern myself not with such risks.” Johnis tightened his jaw. “I present to you a means of restoring that which has so long been denied you. The glory of the sons of our Great One, our lord Teeleh, shall at last be made complete again. These trappings which now bind you shall no longer hinder. What say you, mighty guardian?”

Johnis would know better. The entity had to be lying. Shataiki could never regain “glory,” assuming they’d ever had any.

The bat drooled over the fruit. He wanted it, badly, but something was holding him back. Only one choice would allow them to find out. Was it base to ask Elyon to bestow wisdom upon a Shataiki?

“You think me so easily swayed?” Derias stroked his chin with a claw. His gaze flicked from the fruit to the sacrificed bird to Johnis. “Begone!”

“We have an agreement.” Johnis’s voice was husky. Seductive.

“I am not persuaded.”

“Such is for you and you alone, my prince. Taste and see.” Johnis opened his free hand toward Silvie. She passed him the knife. He cut the fruit open, returned the knife to her, and smelled half of the fruit.

Darsal’s stomach churned.

Johnis said something so soft she couldn’t even hear his voice. She only saw his mouth move.

But the bat heard. Silence lingered.

Then Derias turned to Sucrow and took the bird from his outstretched hand. Johnis watched, blank faced, while the Shataiki tore its prey to pieces and fed. Darsal imagined Johnis was the bird, his soul ripped apart by cruel talons.

Silvie whispered to Johnis, and the bat replied.

“Such is not within reach forever,” Johnis warned.

The throng of Shataiki fluttered in the trees. Darsal grabbed for one of Marak’s knives. He pulled her hand away.

“Take and eat, most excellent of beasts.” Johnis offered the fruit to the bat one last time, his words lost in the air that clung to them.

No, Johnis, no.

Derias shrieked and took off into the air, circled high beyond the trees, and dove back down, wings folded, straight for Johnis.

Darsal grabbed Marak’s knife and whipped her arm back to throw. Marak grabbed her, pinned her down, and took the knife away.

The bat let out another roar and whooshed past Johnis’s head, knocking him down. His talons closed around the fruit, and he swerved upward again. The other Shataiki took flight, and hundreds upon hundreds joined their queen in the sky. They screeched and dove over the humans’ heads.

Marak threw himself over Darsal.

“Did he eat it?” Darsal screamed. “Did he eat it?”

“I don’t know!”

Darsal fought at first, then remembered the general wasn’t going to hurt her. He scooped her up and ran with her in a dark, hot cocoon.

“Josef!” Marak yelled. “Get down from the—”

Johnis shouted over the din. Water splashed when he jumped in and started swimming.

“What’s happening?” Darsal demanded. “What’s going on? Did they take it?”

“Yes,” Marak snarled. “They’re following us out. Josef ordered them to meet us in the sky but not to attack.”

“Then put me down!”

“They aren’t all obeying the command! I don’t want you to—”

He grunted and fell flat on his face on top of her. He fought off the Shataiki clawing them. Another bat assaulted the first, and the pair rolled away. Marak picked Darsal back up and continued his retreat.

“Sucrow! Forget that! Come on!”

“Marak!” She threw her arms around his neck.

“Hold on!” He lost his footing, and they both went flying.

Darsal fell, her head smashing against rock, with Marak’s weight slamming into her. Red and yellow stars, then darkness.

fourteen

J
ohnis raced with the others back through the forest, with two million Shataiki at their heels. Shaeda dug into him, riding him like a horse to steer clear of the bats. Derias had relayed the order not to attack the humans, but the ranks were unstable, and the beasts kept breaking the line to harass them. The queen had taken the bait.

And he was enraged.

The bats roared around them, their wings like thunderclaps, darkening the sky further. Silvie scrambled ahead of Johnis and the others and went for the horses. She yelled.

Shaeda’s power surged through him, charging his muscles and shoving blood through his body with enough force to mow down a Horde army.

Johnis and Marak, still carrying Darsal, were only seconds behind. Sucrow straggled. Johnis tripped over something solid and fumbled. He rolled sideways and jumped back up, looked down.

A horse’s leg bone. Grimacing, Johnis darted around the corpse. All three horses were completely torn to shreds and stripped of flesh.

Marak’s knife was in his hand. He shifted his wriggling bundle over one shoulder. Disgusting, Johnis thought, holding an albino like that.

“They did this?”

“Better the horses than us. Can’t she walk?”

With a snarl, Marak started back up the path, seething over the dead horses. Johnis hurried after him with Silvie and Sucrow.

On and on they fled, breathless and fumbling in the unnatural night. Shaeda made Johnis swift and surefooted, skirting up the sides of the rock faces and canyon with ease. Twice the general stumbled with his burden, and twice Johnis caught him and helped him regain his footing.

“Just leave her!” Johnis said the second time. They were halfway up, and the wench was only slowing them down. “Leave her already! How do you stand the smell of the worm?”

Marak glowered at him. “She’ll die at the appointed time!”

“So now you favor the albino,” Johnis snapped, appalled at the thought. Shaeda bared her teeth in scorn. “Will you be joining Eram’s ranks?”

Marak struck him with his free hand. “Mind your tongue, boy. Bats or no, I’ll have your head and—”

“You think you can destroy me?” Johnis rose from the ground. Shaeda bristled, terrified of the Shataiki and ready to engage any lesser being. This general was now simply a nuisance. Johnis’s hands curled like talons.

Marak turned his back. “You can kill her with the others.”

He marched on, heedless of the rest. Johnis started after him, compelled to tear the general’s heart out and feed it to Derias.

Silvie grasped his shoulder. Shaeda tensed. “Enough,” Silvie said. “Deal with the albinos first. Then the general.”

fifteen

D
arsal regained consciousness while she was still slung over the general’s shoulder. She grunted as her teeth snapped together, chin bouncing off Marak. He took the final steps up the side of the canyon and set Darsal on her own two feet. With Shataiki still swarming in the cauldron, they hadn’t dared slow. Her head throbbed where she’d hit it. Blood caked the back of her neck.