From the Ashes (15 page)

             
As if to punctuate his words, a blur of shadow shot out from the dark, whipping past the clustered men before disappearing just as fast. A gurgling cry, one of the Nine falling to the ground, blood pouring out from the deep cut in his throat. With a final gasp, he lay still.

             
Eight.

             
“Show yourselves, cowards!” bellowed Narlen into the dark.

             
“Oh, Plainsman,” replied the mocking voice. “That hot-blood of yours, so typical of your race. Be patient, your turn will come.”

             
Another flurry of motion in the dark, faster than the blink of an eye, and another man went down, writhing in pain as fast-acting poisons coursed through his blood before foaming at the mouth. One last twitch and he, too, lay dead, agonised eyes staring lifeless into the dark.

             
Seven.

             
Alann snarled, hands gripping tight the haft of his simple workman’s axe.

             
“This is the type of cowardice I expect from assassins,
Memphias
,” he spat.

             
A slow clapping in the shadows.

             
“So, even a Woodsman can put two and two together. Well done. Here’s your prize…”

             
A rippling of motion once again, a blur of pure shadow streaking out from the dark. Alann span, reflexes honed by ten years of being hunted saving him as a poisoned blade nicked the wooden handle of his axe and held fast. He heaved the shadow towards him, driving his knee into the shapeless, swirling form, before wrenching his axe free and thrusting it, butt-first, to where the head should be.

             
A muffled whine of pain and the shape collapsed to the floor, the shadows dissipating like smoke, revealing the prone form of a black, leather-clad Khrda. It looked up at him, trembling in pain as its form began to steam, eyes with no irises gazing out from its mask, mouth revealing sharp fangs as it hissed and tried to rise. The axe swung down, biting deeply into the Khrda’s neck and, with an inhuman screech, the creature was still.

             
“Enough games!” came the frustrated roar from the Councilman. “Slaughter them!”

             
A hideous shriek as the Khrdas came at them en masse, the orange circle of half-light filled now with the blurring, trailing shadows of the once-human assassins. As fast as they came, they retreated, as though unable to stay in the light for long, as though their new, shadowy forms that gave them such speed could only survive in the dark. The men span, frantically dodging and parrying, but the speed of the creatures was beyond comprehension.

             
Here, another man went down, a dagger through his heart, blood spraying from his mouth.

             
Six.

             
There, a head taken clean off shoulders by a razor-bladed vambrace.

             
Five.

             
A cry, receding into the distance, as another was catapulted off his feet and dragged off into the dark to fate unknown.

             
Four.

             
Naresh span, flailing wildly with his hammer. A roiling shadow came at him and he ducked, slamming himself to the ground, feeling the breeze as the creature passed close over his head. He rose, spinning again, eyes straining to pierce the darkness, too preoccupied with moving, dodging, ducking to even ponder his soon and inevitable demise. A rush of wind, a glimpse of smoke through the corner of his eye and he dove sideways to the floor. He rose. Unscathed once again, he realised, with a laugh.

             
Why, then, the burning in his arm?

             
His hand spasmed, dropping the hammer to the floor as the creeping pain began to work its way up his limb. He looked down; the tiniest of nicks on his tricep where a dagger had just caught him. A sudden wave of vertigo and he fell, his body now a raging cauldron of pain as he writhed on the floor. This was it.

             
Gazing upwards, mouth open and drool beginning to spill down his cheek, he saw the form of Alann turning, looking down at him in alarm as the battle raged about. He was shouting something at him, but Naresh couldn’t make it out, not through the rushing of blood in his ears. His eyes widened as he saw a figure standing in the darkness behind the Woodsman’s back, the barest glimmer of cold, grey eyes in the firelight. He tried to shout warning to his leader. Turn. Save yourself. But the toxins froze him, denying him the ability to help his friend.

The scene played out in slow-motion before Naresh’s drug-addled eyes; the figure drew a throwing star, small, but no doubt tipped with the same lethal venom. Alann finally followed the direction of Naresh’s gaze, turning, but too late, the shuriken already arcing its unerring course.

              No time to duck

             
No time to parry.

             
No time.

             
No time.

             
And then no space.

             
No darkness.

             
No noise.

             
Nothing, save the bright, bleaching white. The tearing in twain of reality.

             
And the hot scorching taste of tin.

             
The infinite white faded, ebbing away, even as Naresh’s life did too.

             
Through the blur of failing eyes he saw a blazing figure, looming large, towering impossibly tall above them all. He was clad in a robe of radiant light that filled the Hall with its brightness. In his mighty hand he held the throwing star that had been aimed at Alann, looking at it for a moment before casting it aside and turning to Naresh.

             
His eyes; a gleaming, glowing green like nothing he’d ever seen.

             
Was he dying? Was he entering the Halls of the Ancestors?

             
Was this giant that hummed with power the guardian of the afterlife?

             
The man mountain crouched down, a smile on his face as he spoke. Spoke with words that should have passed the lips of no man.

             
Be healed.

             
In an instant, the blurriness vanished from his vision, the rushing of blood fading from his ears, the pain subsiding and fresh strength filling his limbs, his heart, his thoughts, his every atom as though he were born anew; as though the fatigue and pain and misery of the entire day, the years of service, nay – his entire life – had been blasted away, blown away like cobwebs on the first day of spring.

             
He was alive.

             
He rose, slowly, gazing about him in disbelief as tears rolled freely down his cheeks.

The Khrdas, those assassins of shadow and smoke, clung, trembling in fear from the rafters, hiding behind anything to keep the burning light at bay. Memphias, the master of the death-dealers himself, stood at a distance, backing off, his mouth opening and closing in confusion as he stared at the newcomer that towered in the centre of the room.

Alann, Narlen, Elerik stood, frozen, as they gazed in awe at the titan of light, feeling the power radiating out from him, soaking in the nourishing, restoring ambience that surrounded him. When, finally, someone spoke, it was Alann, his usual confidence shattered by the impossibility of the being before him.

“Who are you…?” he asked, those haunting green eyes familiar yet the aura so different.

The mighty, white-robed figure paused for a few moments before responding, as though unsure itself, before a slight smile played its lips as it remembered.

Stone.

The name reverberated throughout the Hall and the Khrdas squealed in protest as Memphias sneered, wringing his hands as though unsure of what to do.

Alann dropped to his knees and the other men followed suit as he spoke.

“What would you have us do, my Lord?”

Rise, Alann the Woodsman. You alone, out of all humanity, shall never kneel before me.

He rose, trembling.

“Why, my Lord? You… you don’t know me.”

I know you, Alann. And I know what you have lost in the fight for freedom.

The man gazed up at the giant with stunned eyes.

I have seen beyond this world, Woodsman, and you should rejoice; for those you once lost are at peace.
He placed a massive hand gently on Alann’s shoulder
. The wheel yet turns.

A decade of pent up pain released itself from the Woodsman in one gasp, tears trickling down his weathered face at the enormity of the words. Stone smiled, warm and reassuring.

Now go, Alann. Take your friends. From this day on, you shall be The Woodsman’s Four. You will play an important role in the years to come. Now go; fly to the docks and make your way to the causeway. There you shall meet with Iain and the leaders of the Shaman army. They will put you to good use.

The Woodsman nodded, gathering himself, his steel returning with a vengeance, his purpose restored with burning vigour.

“Aye, my Lord.”

He nodded to the others who managed to drag their eyes from the blazing form of Stone, staggering backwards before racing after him away from the Hall, to the Kitchens and beyond, to the tunnels that led to the coast.

Stone smiled, then turned towards Memphias, green eyes blazing as his expression grew serious.

And now to deal with you, my wayward friend…

Chapter Five
:

The elite of the shaman army were on the move, marching towards the causeway about the sides of the battle proper. Kurnos defeated, the Foresters moved up around the rear and across to the right flank to join with the shamans themselves, as well as the wearied but restored Tulador Guard. The main bulk of the Clansman army had been savaged by the shamans’ fusillade of elemental bolts and beams, enough to render the central battle somewhat less one-sided.

              From this point on, the Plains People were on their own.

             
“Are we doing the right thing?”

             
Wrynn understood Gwenna’s concern as she gazed out on the embattled Plains People they were leaving behind, but he nodded nonetheless.

             
“If we tie ourselves up to destroy the entire Clansman army then we risk running out of time. The portal is close to forming.” To point out the fact, he gestured over to the sky behind the Keep; the vivid green beacon standing out like a sore in the sky, the air around it swirling with unnameable, unnatural colours as the walls of reality came down. “We need to- “

             
He was cut off mid-sentence by a shockwave that rippled out from the Pen itself; barely seen, barely heard, but felt in the chest of every man and woman there and beyond. It was as though a stone had been dropped into a placid lake, the results rippling out to the far shores.

             
The universe had changed.

             
“What was that?” Arbistrath, concerned as his eyes were drawn to the looming Keep.

             
Wrynn smiled as he watched his awestruck shamans, Gwenna included, gazing out with open mouths, seeing the spirits flying about in wonderment at what had entered the world.

             
“Salvation…”

***

The Great Hall was lit up, every shadow driven from the room by the blazing angel that loomed monolithic in the centre. The air hummed, crackled, as energies leapt from him. The potent, anti-spirit symbols wrought into the building screaming in protest at his presence and the very stone of the walls began to splinter as reality strained at the seams to contain the impossible being.

             
Throttle back, Graeme,
the titan thought.
Turn down the wick.

             
The searing light died down, the crackling lightning fading away till only a quiet hum betrayed the power contained within his mighty form.

             
“Better,” he muttered to himself with a nod.

             
The assassin stood boldly before Stone, high on the dais whereupon sat the deposed King’s throne, refusing to be intimidated by the newfound power he felt washing out in great, invisible waves.

             
“I don’t know how you survived my poisons, Stone,” Memphias sneered. “And I don’t know how your shamanic tricks work within these walls. But neither fact will alter your destiny; you will die by our hand…”

             
A curt nod in the gloom and the Khrdas attacked, emboldened now that the radiant shroud once surrounding him had dimmed. Blurs of motion, trails of smoke, as they leapt to the attack, poisoned daggers and bladed bracers to the fore.

             
A thundercrack noise and Stone appeared for a moment to be in every place at once; each Khrda receiving in the same instant a mighty fist to the stomach, or kick to the face, each sent hurtling through the air to land with a crash against the far walls of the Hall. A blink of an eye later, Stone was still standing exactly where he’d always been as though he’d never moved.

             
A sniff from the Councilman.

             
“Impressive, Stone. You’ve picked up some new tricks… so have I.”

             
Even as the Khrdas shook their heads, picking themselves up to attack anew, their leader launched down from the dais in a blur of black, rippling energy, his dark patrons rendering him immune to the laws of this world, moving with a speed hitherto unknown to science.

             
But Stone was still the faster.

             
With almost leisurely detachment the looming titan watched the assassin close, his mind calculating all possible angles of attack and defence, registering subconsciously every facet of the coming encounter. If Memphias continued on his current course and speed, he would simply splat against Stone’s rooted form, like a fly against the windscreen of a car. He frowned though, his mind and piercing green eyes flaying the approaching foe like an x-ray as he examined him closer. Warning bells rang in his mind as he clocked the daggers in his hands – the very same that had impaled him once before, wrought with dark sorceries.

             
Dark sorceries the antithesis of the powers that fuelled him.

             
He moved, blurring aside as the assassin struck out, godbane daggers finding empty air. A furious flurry of blows as Memphias pressed home the assault, weapons flashing about with inhuman grace and speed, hands leaving streaking blurs of black energy, forcing the giant Stone to spin, duck, dive and lean as he sought to keep those lethal, ensorcelled blades at bay. An opening, Stone’s fist shooting out like a piston, impacting with precision and launching Memphias across the Hall to smash into the great bronze doors with a clang, leaving a great dent as he fell to the floor.

But far from being out for the count, the assassin simply looked up, grinning as the darkness gathered about him to heal his wounds, before blurring once more into the fray.

              A hiss and a shriek as the Khrdas re-joined the fight along with their master; their non-magical weapons no threat to Stone, but they got in his way, always there when he least wanted them, swarming him like bugs. He lashed out, hurling them aside with staggering punches and kicks when the opportunity appeared, sending them flying away, only to return moments later; the darkness empowered them.