From the Ashes (5 page)

             
Tearing his gaze from the face, Naresh had looked upwards, to the warriors that still stood about the table in the centre of the Hall. A Marzban, or what used to be one, had looked back at him, fixing him with sallow, sunken eyes and, for an instant, a long, spine-tingling instant, Naresh could have sworn that he had seen the man’s very soul, screaming away in torment in the black pits of those orbs. Screaming, for these actions were not his, not what he wanted to be a part of. But futile, for the man’s body, as with those of the troops around him, was obviously no longer his own.

             
The Clansmen had sprinted towards him, as one. Naresh had bolted for the door.

             
And now here he was, running for his life, the sounds of carnage as the slaughter was unleashed anew in the kitchens and corridors behind him as he raced for the one sanctuary he knew like the back of his hand.

             
The Warren of tunnels beneath the Pen.

***

The leaders of the Shaman army were gathered in the cool, stone chamber. Wrynn. Gwenna. Arbistrath. Hofsted. Iain.

             
But not Stone himself.

             
“Gone? What do you mean, gone?” Arbistrath’s tone was incredulous. “He’s been here for a single day. The Shamans risked their lives to draw the poisons from him. The army expects him to lead them to battle. And now he ups sticks and goes as soon as he awakens?”

             
It was Wrynn who answered the indignant Lord.

             
“Stone has reasons, Arbistrath. Good reasons. He goes to seek that which is lost to him. If he succeeds then he will return, in good time and with greater power. Power that will prove useful in the times ahead.”

             
“Greater power?” The noble laughed in disbelief. “The man is already the greatest warrior to ever live. He’s slaughtered armies single-handedly. And you witnessed that little exhibition out there – if magic fireballs do no more than singe the stubble from that chiselled jaw, then what chance have Clansmen, eh? Or the pet mages of the Seeress? Pure greed. Pure hunger for power. That’s all it is. Off on a vainglorious hunt for ever greater-power whilst we –“

             
He was cut off by Wrynn’s bellowing voice, each word hammering into the ears like a nail, each syllable felt in the chest as much as heard.

             
“Cease your infernal prattling and set aside your personal loss. You speak on that about which you know nothing.” The shadows seemed to flee from the room at his rage before he continued, his voice now quieter, darker. “We face more than mortal soldiers and the Seeress’ coven. Darker, older things are arrayed against us. Our enemy will not risk us reaching that portal. The Nagah-Slayer is right to seek power, for without it, even his might will avail us nothing…”

             
Silence descended on the room for long moments, as each person pondered the implications of the elder Shaman’s words. Finally, the silence was broken by a voice.

             
“How long will he be gone? Do we move without him?”

             
It was Iain, of the Foresters. Gwenna answered him.

             
“Difficult to say. In the realm of the Avatars, time moves differently to how it does here. What seems like minutes to him may be days here. So to answer your question, yes, we move. He will join us, when he can. Until that time, we have orders to carry out. He has left us instructions. We have only days in which to march south to the Pen. So we leave tomorrow.”

             
Nods all round, before Hofsted raised a hand.

             
“Your shamans, they scry the land of our foes, yes?”

             
The flame-haired sorceress nodded.

             
“Any word of the enemy ranged against us?”

             
She drew in a breath, as if pondering whether to answer truthfully or not, before relenting.

             
“The full might of Pen-Merethia is gathered in the garrisons. Ten thousand Clansmen, as well as the Hunt. As for the Council themselves, we are unable to scry them, for the hand of the enemy rests heavy upon them. Likewise with the Isle of Storms itself – it is covered, now, with a dark and vile cloud through which our gaze cannot penetrate.”

             
The Lieutenant bit his lip as he mulled over the vast numbers, before shaking his head.

             
“Too many. Far too many. We number barely a hundred men. How can we hope to prevail against  such numbers?”

             
The lady shaman’s youthful face creased into a pretty smile.

             
“You will find that we have some tricks up our sleeve,” she reassured him. “Besides, the Nagah-Slayer seemed to have quite the trust in a certain recruit of yours…”

***

You will not be welcome, Wrynn had told him. The spirits will make life difficult for you, for you still carry the taint of the enemy. It may take you time to find the entrance to their world. Normally, Stone had all the time in the world.

             
But not this time.

             
Seek out the dark and lonely places, he’d been told. Let the spirits find you. Only by persuading them will you find a way. Find them and give them what they want. Stone had thought long and hard on that, on what kind of spirits he had encountered the first time round and which ones had seemed human enough to talk with, bargain with.

             
The spirits of earth were too elemental, too bestial; the Knocker had been an almost mindless creature of instinct. Besides, the Earth was slow, intractable, and Stone had an inkling that earth spirits were loath to change their mind on subjects.

             
The spirits of fire; all he’d sensed in them was a ravenous, burning hunger. He didn’t even know where to find such creatures, but even if he did, he sensed that to confront them would be no more than suicide.

             
The spirits of air. He’d met with them before, more than once now, unsure still, after all this time, whether there was even such a thing as the Avatar of Air, whether all the tiny, flitting Sylphii were but one and the same. Either way, their capricious and flighty nature had left him befuddled and frustrated before. He had visions of hour upon hour of laboured, looping conversation.

             
Therefore, that left only one type of spirit with which he was willing to try to parlay.

             
And he had a feeling that he wouldn’t be waiting long.

             
The gully at the edge of the Valley had become a ravine and the ravine had descended down, down until it had opened out into a large, underground cavern. Cut off from the sun by the stone roof overhead, the cave system was dark, yet as Stone gazed about, he could tell that he was still seeing in colour, not using his night-vision. It struck him, as he rounded a rock; luminous mushrooms, glowing an eerie blue, lit up the place, lending an otherworldly ambience. Appropriate. The ground was mossy, spongy under Stone’s bare feet, for he had come unarmed and unarmoured, clad only in a white loin cloth – for against whatever foes he might face on this Journey, mortal weapons would be of little use.

             
The air was cool, tasting of minerals and plant-life as he ventured further into the cavern. Here and there, rock-pools, the skittering of tiny crabs as they went about their business. At one point he started, as a centipede no less than two feet long scuttled out of a crack in a rock, blindly passing over his foot before snatching one of the crabs in its great, gaping pincers and dragging its struggling prize back to its lair.

             
Further he walked into the gloom, slowly, patiently. A shiver as he walked into an ice-cold pool of water now; the crystal clear waters perfectly still till now, rising up to his ankles, his movements making the surface ripple outwards with every footstep. He walked further on, ten paces, then stopped, his sixth sense tingling, smiling slightly.

             
For he was no longer alone.

             
“Nagini…”

             
He turned to look back the way he had come, his suspicions proving correct; for there, standing in the pool just behind him, the lithe and predatory form of the Water Nymph watched him, those impenetrably dark and merciless eyes seeming out of place within the womanly contours of her beautiful face. Unchanged, she was; just as alluring, just as deadly as when they’d first met a century ago. Unsurprising, for she was a spirit. It was natural for spirits not to age. It was Stone, here, who was the unnatural one.

             
“Nagah-Slayer…” the Sprite replied, the tones soft, babbling yet insistent, like water eddying about rocks in a stream, her tongue flicking delicately over sharp and pointed teeth as she spoke. “Why do you come back here?”

             
Stone answered, his eyes taking in the creature before him, seeing her for the first time in colour. Her skin, that appeared so smooth yet he knew to be so rough, a pale, tree-sap green. Her hair in long tendril-like dreadlocks, the colour of which he’d guessed correctly; the browny-green of seabed kelp. About her waist, preserving the bottom half of her elemental modesty, a dark green loin-cloth, embroidered in sea-shell with the runic symbol for Water. Her top half was bare, showing all the naked, soft-seeming curves of a woman, taut and athletic.

             
“I need to meet with the Avatars. Again.”

             
The Nymph cocked her head to one side, listening like a dog, long strands of hair falling forwards to half cover the amused, almost pitying smile on her face.

             
“No. You are not welcome here. The taint of the enemy still lingers on you. I can smell the brimstone, the fire; it unsettles me. You must leave here.”

             
Stone was loath to anger her, for he still remembered the rake of her lethal claws, the determination of her bloodlust; had it not been for the intervention of the Avatar of Water that last time, he would probably be dead now. For the spirit had shown no signs of mercy, only a mounting, dizzying rage, like that of the unstoppable, surging ocean. And, as a spirit, she was undoubtedly impossible to kill.

             
Yet he pressed on.

             
“I
must
be allowed entry to their realm. For the fate of not just one world, but countless rests upon them.”

             
Nagini laughed, soft, mocking.

             
“What matter to us, the affairs of mortal men, hmm? We existed a billion years before you. We will continue a billion years after you are gone. I have seen it.” Her eyes glimmered, dark, inky pools of forbidden knowledge. “Now leave here. If you force me to ask again, then I shall have to kill you.”

             
Damn this creature; for a spirit of water she was always thirsting for a fight. Stone snarled slightly, the sound reverberating loud and deep in the cave, sending visible ripples through the water in which they stood.

             
“Fine. Then you shall have to kill me. But be warned; I’m less easy a prospect than I was a hundred years ago…”

             
The sultry, siren of death smiled as she opened her hands, long, black talons extending from slender fingers.

***

The sweet smell of wood-smoke had her smiling as she made her way from the Hall of the Elders and out, walking down the path that bisected the Retreat. The flavours of the wood were subtly spiced, different here to the wood she’d ever smelt elsewhere on her travels. But then again, everything was different here, in the Valley. Everything was more vibrant, more alive, for this was where the Elements made their home.

             
Though, of course, Gwenna was biased; for aside from her brief stay in Tulador and her captivity in Merethia, this valley was all she’d ever known.

             
She walked past houses, shops on either side of the path, knowing every single doorframe, every single window with the familiarity of old friends, nodding with a smile to people she’d known for all twenty years of her life as they went about their business. The Retreat was a small settlement, having not grown much over the years. How long had it been since  Wrynn had founded the place? Gwenna’s parents had been second generation, she knew that at least.

             
The thought still gave her sadness, at times, that she never really got a chance to know those that had conceived her. Her mother, a fair-haired Hills-woman she’d been told, had passed away with the very act of bringing her into the world. Her father, a tall warrior of Plains descent had taken off into the mountains soon after in his grief, leaving her to the care of Wrynn. Never to return. Perhaps it was this loss of roots, this sense of disconnection that had caused the red-haired girl to take so seriously to her studies.