Eolyn (35 page)

“We defeated an entire army of your kind,” Tzeremond said. “It was irresponsible of Ghemena to let you believe you could confront us alone.”

Eolyn clung to the earth, seeking a comfort that could not be found in the cool and fragrant grass. Just over the pale green blades she saw the crystal glitter of her staff, a useless tool that had brought her nowhere. She was only a pawn in the end, a toy used by the Gods to finish what Kedehen had begun.

She shut her eyes against the truth, and heard an impossible sound: the laughter of a young girl. A blur of motion emerged from the trees and ran toward her. A child knelt and peered at the fallen maga. Dark red curls framed her round face. Her earth brown eyes sparked with curiosity.

I think it would be better to die with a little magic in me,
she confided,
than to die without any magic at all.

Eolyn managed a smile, and the girl faded. Images of the South Woods returned to her, of twisting corridors and endless adventures. She heard the trees and the animals, felt the warm embrace of Ghemena. She remembered the first time Achim ran with her into the cold river, and all the magic they discovered together, before the Gods set them on different paths, before fate goaded them into war.

Drawing air into her lungs, she anchored her spirit deep into the earth. She felt water flow through her veins and stoked the fires of her heart. When all the elements illuminated her interior, Eolyn rose to face her adversary. Calling her staff, she drove it into the ground and let the long forbidden curse burn over her tongue.

Maehechnam arrat saufini

Ehemkaht neurai!

Lightning shot down from the boiling clouds, tunneling into the root of her staff and crackling up its length. White fire whipped through Eolyn, straining her limbs and threatening to explode inside of her. Bursting from the crystal capped head, the bolt smashed Tzeremond into the ground. The wizard cried out, limbs flailing, and then lay motionless.

Eolyn drew a ragged breath. Her body ached and her ears rang. Her hands felt raw and blistered, but she was alive.

Yet so was he.

Tzeremond coughed and rolled onto his side. Trembling violently, he pushed himself to his knees, wheezing and clutching his stomach. His robes were scorched and his hands blackened. His face was chalky gray, but rigid with determination.

He reached for his staff and steadied himself against it. He did not stand, but pinned Eolyn with his amber eyes and lifted one shaking arm toward her. Extending his boney fingers, he cried out:

Saenau

Revoerit

Nefau

The ground lurched beneath Eolyn. Her staff slipped like quicksilver from her hands.

A frigid wind spread through her like a tumor, drying the blood in her veins and leaving them hollow. Desperately she tried to invoke a counter spell, but the elements deserted her. The earth crumbled into a vortex and sucked the churning black clouds toward its core. A current was dragging her down, and she found nothing to grasp that could stop her fall. Dirt clogged her throat, rocks battered her limbs. The weight of the mountain fell upon her and consumed her in darkness.

C
hapter Forty-Two

Akmael wrenched his blade free
from the earth next to Ernan’s neck. He stood over the rebel leader, one hand gripping his axe, the other clenched in fury.

Gods take her! What has she done to me?

No King of Vortingen could suffer such a man to live. Yet in the moment Akmael’s weapon descended, he had seen Eolyn’s face and heard her lament. He had hesitated, and his blade missed its mark.

For what?

So Kaie’s son could drag himself off this wretched field and foment another insurrection? Ernan could not be spared. Not even for her.

Akmael lifted his axe once more, but a tremor passed through the earth and threw him off balance. He felt a part of his soul tearing away. His gaze snapped toward the southern ridge. Lightning wrapped a fine luminous net around roiling clouds that swirled and descended in a sharp funnel toward the heart of the mountain.

Eolyn!

Around him, the battle was fast drawing to a close. Rebels not yet slain were fleeing into the woods under the second charge of his men. Akmael seized the bridle of the nearest mounted knight. “Your horse!”

The man obeyed.

Taking the knight’s long sword as well, Akmael leaped upon the animal and spurred it forward, cursing fallen bodies and discarded weapons that obstructed his path.

By the time he arrived at the summit, the storm had vanished and the sun warmed the grass once again. Baedon and two other High Mages attended Tzeremond, who sagged against his staff. Eolyn lay lifeless on the ground.

Akmael’s heart spasmed as he dismounted and knelt beside her. There was no breath upon her lips, no pulse beneath her skin. An unnatural chill had overtaken her, deeper and more ominous than the simple cold of death.

“What happened here?” he demanded.

“We have succeeded, my Lord King.” Baedon responded with a deep bow. “Albeit at great cost. Master Tzeremond has suffered a terrible curse—”

“Succeeded at what?”

“Why, my Lord King.” Baedon sent a confused look toward the wizard. “Your orders were clear.”

Tzeremond lifted a trembling hand to quiet the mage. His face was ashen, but his eyes glowed with relief. “We have cleansed her of her magic, in this world and the next.”

His words struck harder than any weapon. Akmael’s eyes stung with the impact. When he found his voice, it was hoarse. “Cleansed her?”

“
Ahmad-dur
,” Baedon said. “We invoked
Ahmad-dur
.”

“Against this woman?” Akmael bellowed. “For the love of the Gods! She was a maga, not a monster!”

Tzeremond subdued a rattling cough. “It was the only way to finish them, once and for all.”

With a furious roar, Akmael charged them. He severed the neck of one mage and drove his blade through the gut of another. Only Baedon escaped, taking the form of Raven and soaring out of reach. Akmael let him go and thrust the point of his bloodied sword under Tzeremond’s chin. “You dare disobey me?”

“You think I am afraid of death?” Tzeremond rasped. “I, who served the Gods faithfully all my life? I, who brought magic to the line of Vortingen? I do not fear death! I fear the wrath of Dragon should I prove weak against the whims of my misguided student!”

Akmael drew back his weapon and swung, but his sword was deflected by another blade. The clash of metal sent a shower of sparks into Tzeremond’s face. The King’s wrath turned to surprise when he recognized the man who had crossed swords with him. “Drostan?”

“Pardon me, my Lord King.” The knight’s voice was steady, his gaze resolute. “Tzeremond can do no more harm as he is, but if you slay him now, he may be waiting for you, where she has gone.”

Air returned to Akmael’s lungs, like the sharp breath of a winter morning. He stepped back and turned to where Eolyn lay.

“What…What are you saying?” Tzeremond’s voice shook.  “Drostan, this thing you propose…It is madness!”

“It’s been done before,” Akmael murmured.

By the wizard Tyrendel, and Master Eranon, among others. Akmael had memorized all the legends of descent after his mother’s death, desperate to learn how to enter the Underworld and return with his spirit intact, hopeful he might one day find his mother and bring her home. That boyhood dream had long since faded, but perhaps those studies would serve him now.

Akmael drove his sword into the earth and began stripping off his breast plate.

“My Lord King!” Tzeremond cried. “The dead must not be brought back!”

“She’s not dead,” Akmael replied. “Not yet.”

“But she is lost to this world! The curse of
Ahmad-dur
cannot be reversed.”

Akmael knelt beside Eolyn. A frost had set upon her lips and lashes. A bluish sheen had spread beneath her skin. The chill of her fingers was like a knife through his heart. Eolyn’s body now served as nothing more than an anchor for her spirit, tethered to the realm of the living and then cast into the Underworld. Thinking she was dead, the maga would try to cross to the Afterlife, but the tether would hold her back, trapping her among the Lost Souls.

“You will not find your way back!” Tzeremond pleaded. “Such skills vanished with the masters of old! You will fall prey to the Lost Souls, or be devoured by Naether Demons. They will destroy you, my Lord King, and with you the line of Vortingen. You cannot abandon our people!”

“Silence him, Drostan.” Akmael kept his eyes fixed on Eolyn. For the first time, he realized how the mere knowledge of her existence had sustained him, whether they were together or apart, whether they stood as friends or enemies. He could not lose her. Not like this.

Opening his belt, Akmael withdrew all the winter sage he had.

Enough to guide a soul to the other side, but not sufficient to bring one back.

Spying Eolyn’s purse, he reached toward it and then hesitated. The traditions of Moisehén forbade one mage to violate the medicine belt of another.

“Well,” he whispered, loosening her belt with care, “I suppose you will think this the least of my transgressions, should you return.”

He was relieved to find her purse abundantly lined not only with winter sage, but with the dry cottony fruit of white albanett, and several night shade mushrooms. Some instinct of hers must have anticipated this. She was not ready to leave them yet.

Dividing the herbs into nine bundles, Akmael set them in a circle around Eolyn. He called her discarded staff, laid it by her side, and placed her cold fingers upon it. Taking her other hand in his, he pressed his lips upon her forehead. Then he rested one palm over her heart and recited the verse of Tyrendel, memorized so many years ago.

Ehekaht Ehekahtu

Elaeom maen du

Sepuenem maene

Elaeom maen du

A nuhm moerte

A nuhm moerte a vaete

Faeom semtue

Ehekaht Ehekahtu

The herbs ignited. Bitter smoke stung his throat.

Akmael closed his eyes, drew a deep breath, and repeated the chant. His voice fell into a constant rhythm, his spirit focused on a single purpose.

The earth shifted. A thin rumble sounded beneath the grass as the trees sent their roots toward him. Shoots sprouted at his knees. Leafy tendrils crept over his torso, rough woody vines spread across his back. When they finished embracing his body, the fine limbs wove a winding path down his arm toward Eolyn. In the moment they touched her, the tender new buds withered and turned black.

Akmael felt the terrifying pull of the earth’s core, a primeval force that strained his bones to the breaking point. Placing his trust in the plants that sustained him, he let his spirit fall into the abyss.

Violent convulsions shook Eolyn
as spirit was wrenched from body. She fell weightless through a world without form, until blackness enveloped her in its soft embrace, and she understood the Gods had spoken.

The time of the Magas was ended. The Fates had set her free. The scent of winter sage drifted about her spirit in a wispy cloud. Refusing to succumb to sadness, she took heart in the thought that Ghemena waited on the other side, along with her mother and father, and Ernan.

Remembering what Ghemena taught her, Eolyn sang the song of passage. Her voice rose muted inside the thick darkness, nothing more than a murmur against an eternal night. She paused and listened to the silence. Soon the voice of Ghemena could be heard faintly across the void, followed by Eolyn’s mother and father. Their melody floated on tendrils of light, weaving into a pale moon caught behind a mass of clouds.

As Eolyn drifted toward their song, the landscape took shape around her, a stone filled place where the air did not move. The ground spread into a path that wound against steep cliffs and over formless valleys.

The singing moon settled at the top of the next peak. Yet when she reached it, the voices receded and the light descended to the valley below. Though time no longer held her, the journey seemed without end, the ephemeral orb always escaping to the next horizon.

Doubt began to seep into Eolyn’s heart. Anxiety quickened her pace. Finally, upon one rise, she succeeded in touching the orb, only to have it to vanish altogether.

Eolyn stopped and remained very still. Uncertainty crowded her spirit, worn thin by battle and death. Were her loved ones rejecting her? Had her failure condemned her in Ghemena’s eyes? Had her weakness caused Kaie to turn away?

She attempted to begin her song anew, but the melody eluded her memory. A knot of fear took hold. She tried to loosen it, but there was no living earth in which to root herself, no air with which to fill her lungs, no fire burning in her heart, no blood rushing through her veins. The elements that empowered her in the living world could not be accessed here, not even to subdue her fear.

The Lost Souls
, Ghemena told her once,
hear doubt like a soft bell calling them to the feast.

An oily mist rose off the ground. Eolyn retreated in dread. She felt the dead slither down the passageways of her mind, spirits in various states of decay, anxious for the renewal she offered, hungry for the life force that would slow their inevitable decline into nothingness. Older souls flitted like shadows on the edge of her awareness, younger ones rose up as pale reflections of their human form. Together they advanced toward her. She could hear their longing, feel their desire to consume her magic in soft whispers drawn out slowly against the night.

Desperate, she ran. But what refuge could be found in the Underworld? What corner of her mind could shut them out?

Willing her path onto a wide plain, Eolyn instinctively sought the safe memories of her childhood: the village of her youth, the cottage of Ghemena, the deep folds of the South Woods. Every haven responded to her call, revealing itself in gray shadows, but the Lost Souls destroyed them all. They tore down her village, trampled Ghemena’s garden, and felled ancient trees with slow sure strokes.

They surrounded Eolyn and crowded in on her spirit. They wrapped her in their embrace and dragged her down into their midst. The hooks of their hunger sank into her soul with the delicate pinch of tiny leeches. She tried to cry out, but no voice sounded in her throat. She tried to escape, but her limbs were paralyzed.

A sudden movement startled her out of her stupor. A blur of gray fur rushed past. She heard a low growl and saw eyes flash in the dark.

Recognizing Wolf, Eolyn broke free and scrambled after him. The animal led her back inside the forest, to the banks of a small stream where it vanished inside its den. Eolyn followed, sealing the entrance behind her with what little magic she had left. Though Wolf had already disappeared, relief renewed her. Shivering, she gave thanks. What better place to hide from darkness than in a dark hole?

A hollow scream sounded across the wastes outside, cutting short her respite. Something crashed against her hideaway. The sealed entrance shattered into a thousand smoky pieces that melted into nothingness.

Had there been a breath to hold in that place, Eolyn would have held it then. Before her, an unearthly creature swayed on long glowing limbs, its predatory eyes lost in gaping hollows, its sagging mouth an open pit. Assaulting her with an ear-piercing howl, the Naether Demon leapt forward, exposing long curved claws.

Eolyn jumped out of its reach and stumbled into empty space. A small passage at the end of the hideaway revealed itself to her. Overcome with terror, she fled into its depths.

Akmael’s spirit took root
in the void. The night was thick, the dead ominously still. He heard no song of passage floating across the abyss, saw no distant illumination that would indicate a maga’s bright soul. Only desolation reached out, touching his heart and rendering it cold.

He could yet risk invoking more magic if he wished to find her.

Without the power of the living elements,
Tyrendel had written,
a mage in the Underworld must expend his own spirit to cast even the smallest spell. This diminishes his chances of returning whole, and the magic awakens the dead.

But to sit here without knowing when or if a path would be revealed, fearful that while he stalled she perished, was unacceptable.