Sunset of Lantonne (58 page)

She said nothing, following her father up to the top floor. There was nothing she could think of doing that would matter if things were as bad here as she feared. Deep down, she already knew that the answer was not going to be a pleasant one.

At the top floor, her father went over to the dining table that sat off to one side and began preparing tea, as he often had when travelers arrived. Nothing about it was unusual.

Pouring the steaming tea, her father told her, “I cannot wait to hear how things are in Lantonne. You’ll have to tell me everything.”

Ilarra nodded and turned to the windows, looking out over the whole village. The various buildings were exactly like she remembered them. No one moved around out there, making the scene all the more eerie. It looked normal, aside from the people being absent.

It was then that Ilarra realized one other thing that was missing. None of the homes’ chimneys let out any smoke that she would have expected, if only to prepare tea or an evening meal. Every building lay still as could be, seemingly abandoned. Several still had windows that were broken from the attack when she had last been in Hyeth. That had been winter…who would leave their windows unboarded through months of snow and rain?

Taking the offered cup from her father, Ilarra moved to another window. She could see nothing different from there. Somehow, she knew she simply was not looking in the right places.

“What can you tell me about the city?” her father asked, sitting down in a padded chair. “Please. Sit and tell me everything.”

Ilarra ignored him and moved to the next wall of the building, looking out the windows that faced the rear of the library, where she had been unable to see during her run from Asha. That was also where they tended to compost their refuse and thus was the last place she normally would have looked.

Situated behind the library, a vast pit had been dug out, the trees removed and dragged away. The pit contained fifty or more elves and even several horses, standing still and staring straight ahead. As she watched, a man wearing the armor and crest of Lantonne looked up toward her, staring through her with cloudy white eyes. The man’s throat gaped, having been cut nearly ear to ear.

Ilarra’s hands shook as she backed away from the window, hurriedly putting her cup on the nearest table. Turning, she nearly ran into her father, standing directly behind her.

“You should have stayed ignorant,” he told her, moving to block her attempt to walk past him. “Our lord’s agents in Lantonne were to keep you there, so that you could take the blame for our actions. I had meant to protect you, Ilarra, but you force my hand. Dorralt wants you to either work with us or be brought back to him.”

“Who are you?” demanded Ilarra. She backed up until she touched the wall.

“Your father…at least what is left of him,” he answered. “Lord Dorralt gave us all a gift and now I understand what my part in his plans are. You’ll be brought back to Altis until he sorts out what to do with you.”

Ilarra looked around, trying to find a way to escape. To reach the stairs, she had to go through her father. Going through the window avoided her father, but would likely kill her even before her father’s magic could finish the job.

Her father reached for Ilarra, prompting immediate action. She cried out as she pulled a spell together, hurling a bolt of pure energy into his chest that threw him across the room, tumbling and crashing into the wardrobe there.

As he landed, he rolled back onto his feet, not a scratch on him. “I had expected more fear and less fight in you,” he admitted, rubbing at his chest with one hand. “Could you survive the same attack, child?”

Ilarra’s father gestured toward her, creating a bolt just like the one she had used. It crackled as she threw herself to the floor, narrowly avoiding being struck. Instead of hitting her, the energy ripped part of the wall away and let in a gust of damp wind as the wall fell away behind her.

Praying the ground was soft enough to cushion her fall, Ilarra rolled into the opening in the wall before her father could attack again. She fell nearly fifteen feet, landing on her back in the mud with a splash. The impact knocked the wind from her lungs, but aside from dazing her, she felt relatively intact.

Ilarra scrambled to her feet, trying to make herself run as she knew she had only a second or two before her father would get to the edge above her and begin casting. Looking up, she saw her father lean out of the gaping hole in the library, grinning like a madman.

“Dorralt asked me to arrange to have all the adults serve,” he called down. “He never said what to do with the children. Tell me if you like my work. Our master was pleased.”

Footsteps in the mud nearby made Ilarra spin. Coming from the nearest buildings in groups of three and four were children, both elven and wildling. They ranged from toddlers to near-adults, but every one of them bore grievous wounds, often a gaping knife-wound in their chests. In seconds, more than a dozen children and pups watched her with emotionless white eyes, cutting off any direction’s escape.

Her father continued from above her. “They weren’t suitable for the war against Lantonne, but they are wonderful for demoralizing a foe. Once I had them turned, their parents often lay down weeping and let their own children rip them apart. The town fell in under an hour, thanks to the littlest zombies.”

The small undead approached slowly, closing in a half-circle around Ilarra, trapping her against the wall of the library. They opened and closed their mouths as though anticipating a meal, some of the wolves even drooling and growling. They tightened their ranks, raising their arms to reach for her as they got closer.

A distant howl shook the wall Ilarra had backed up against, then began to reverberate through the ground itself. The zombies did not stop or look away, but when she checked, her father was searching the sky for the source of the sound.

No more than twenty feet out from Ilarra, the trees exploded away, throwing mud in all directions. Many of the child zombies fell in the shaking of the ground, though they continued crawling toward her, and the closest of those still standing were within a few steps of being able to grab at her.

As the flying mud and debris settled, Nenophar knelt in the middle of the explosion, looking to Ilarra as though he had fallen out of the sky. He stood and marched toward her, flinging a half dozen zombies aside with a wave of his arm, throwing the flailing bodies almost fifty feet away.

“Run!” he ordered her, turning his attention to her father, who had come down and was walking around the corner of the building. “Get into the woods. I’ll meet you before nightfall.”

Ilarra did not even consider disobeying. She ran straight past Nenophar, heading toward the edge of the woods through the opening he had created among the child zombies. Her boots were heavy with water and her feet burned and felt as though they would fall off, but she ran as hard as she could, driven by fear of seeing her father try to kill her again.

Looking over her shoulder, Ilarra watched as her father began throwing flames from his fingers, engulfing the area where Nenophar had stood. Without ceasing the stream of flame, he lifted his head and smiled grimly at her.

In that one look, Ilarra saw something that shook her and nearly made her fall. In her father’s face, she saw the shadowed flicker of a hundred other people. Every one mirrored his expression, as if images of other men and women had been overlaid on his face.

Ilarra stopped running and stared at her father, seeing the overlapping ghostly images were not limited to his face. Even the magic he used against Nenophar appeared to her as if a hundred different people were casting in unison, one atop another, compounding the magic’s power.

The flames striking the ground near the library abruptly parted and Nenophar appeared in the blackened crater, holding up a hand to divide the magic around his body. Seeing that jarred Ilarra out of her surprise and she took off again, heading into the woods.

She ran straight away from the village, barely even thinking about where she might be going or whether there might be any shelter there. The woods gradually closed in around her as she got farther from the areas the elves had long kept thinned for easier travel, then with the sunlight beginning to fade, she found that the trees had begun to thin again.

Slowing her pace, Ilarra studied where she was and tried to figure out whether she had gotten herself completely lost. It took her a while, but she soon realized the area was familiar.

Turning a little more westward, Ilarra continued away from Hyeth into the fields beyond the woods the elves had used for food. Crossing those, she continued through the dead brush that filled that section of the plains until the ground evened out and she only had the mud to slow her down.

In the dimming light, she just barely spotted a thin column of smoke in the distance. She had no idea who might be so far from the village, but it held a potential for warmth she desperately needed as the air cooled for the night. Ilarra turned in that direction and trudged onward, stumbling as her feet became more numb with each minute.

Ilarra finally could see the source of the smoke well after the sun had fallen behind the mountains and the temperature had begun dropping, making her wet clothing feel icy, despite the temperature not being terribly low. Long before, she had lost all feeling in her extremities, and she worried deep down whether she might lose her fingers or toes. Freezing to death in spring…that would be a fitting end.

Several miles out from the last trees of the woods Hyeth had been built into, a grouping of small tents ringed the thin stream of smoke that rose into the sky. Ilarra gave no thought to who might own them, her mind far too exhausted to think that through. All she knew or cared about was that someone there was alive and had a fire.

Ilarra staggered into the flattened area around the tents, shivering uncontrollably as she made her way toward the only tent that had smoke rising from it. She dimly noticed there were bloodstains across the canvas walls of most of the tents, but a fire spoke of survivors from whatever had happened. She did not need to stay long, just long enough to dry out.

Walking up to the tent’s flap, Ilarra stared at the simple animal drawings on the leather hides that made up the wall of the tent. She knew those, as any elven child from Hyeth would. The tent belonged to the barbarians that roamed the plains, preying on those weaker than themselves. They were the mortal enemies of Hyeth and the reason for protectors like Raeln. They were the creatures Ilarra had spent her life fearing…though now they seemed far less intimidating.

Ilarra looked around, trying to find anywhere else she could go. In the dim light of the stars, nothing stood out beyond the tents. If she did not warm up here and dry her clothing, she believed she would die on the plains before morning. That may well have been exaggeration, but she was shaking and had no strength to go on.

She took a slow breath and then stepped into the tent, feeling better instantly as heat washed over her from the fire in the middle. As she entered, someone at the far side of the small space sat up, drew a bow, and aimed an arrow at her chest.

“Who are you, elf?” demanded the human woman.

The woman was older than Ilarra and dried blood spotted her face. Old scars mingled with new cuts on her arms and even more wounds marred her leather pants. The woman was clearly used to a violent life, but her wounds told of recent troubles.

“Ilarra of Hyeth,” she explained, raising her hands in a gesture of surrender. “I saw the smoke. I needed a fire and hoped you would share yours.”

The woman kept the arrow aimed at Ilarra for a few more seconds, then laughed and lowered it. Motioning to the fire, she leaned back against a pile of animal hides. “Enjoy it until they come for us. I lit it to call the dark ones here so I can die warm and on my own choice of time. You are as welcome as any to die here with me.”

Trembling, Ilarra sat down alongside the fire, letting its warmth slowly bring tingling needles of feeling back into her arms and legs.

“You are far from your people, farmer,” the woman noted. She eyed Ilarra as if judging whether she could hold her own in a fight. “Even my people would not dress so for the nighttime in the colder months. Are you weak in the head or were you chased from your little elf houses by the dark ones?”