Sunset of Lantonne (63 page)

Raeln tried to reach out and grab for anything that might keep him from falling, but his left arm fell limply to his side and his right was immediately caught by the zombie. He fell, tumbling head over feet down the steep slope. A second later, he slammed into a stone outcropping, bringing his fall to an abrupt stop. The zombie continued to bounce off the dirt and stone of the slope to fall hundreds of feet to the trees below.

Gasping and trying to remind himself he was lucky to be alive despite how his ribs felt, Raeln pulled himself onto the stone protruding from the side of the nearly sheer side of the mountain. He sat there for a minute, catching his breath through the pain.

Once Raeln was sure his ribs were not too badly injured and likely not broken, he tested his left arm to see if it might support his weight enough to climb back up the slope. He could move the fingers and had some sensation returning, but it would not be strong enough to trust just yet. He would have to do his best without relying on that arm.

Raeln stood up on the small perch and eyed the space between himself and the top. It was a short distance, no more than ten feet above his head, but with one numb and weak arm and the other bruised and aching, it could well have been a hundred feet.

Taking a steadying breath, Raeln dug his claws into the packed dirt and stones of the hillside, hoping the slightly less-than-vertical surface might help keep him from sliding. His claws had grown out in the time out in the wilds, but they were still not made for scaling mountainsides. He braced himself, then pulled his body up a foot or so, using the claws on his feet to cling to the slope and keep from falling. He repeated this process over and over, pulling himself a short distance, before holding his position with his feet. At last, when he reached up to drag himself upward, his hand came over the lip of the slope and he began the slow effort of wiggling up over the edge without losing his grip and falling all the way back down.

Raeln finally got the majority of his body up onto the level ground at the top of the slope, flopping onto the grass there and panting. Looking up, he saw Greth sitting on the ground nearby, staring at him with an expression torn between horror and wordless amazement.

“I’m not dead yet, but that was close,” Raeln admitted, kicking his legs up onto the flat ground. “You have to put up with me a little longer.”

That seemed to snap Greth out of whatever he was thinking, and the man ran over and pulled Raeln up into a powerful hug. He clung there a long time, then released Raeln and pressed his muzzle against Raeln’s.

“Greth?” asked Raeln, pulling his head away. That gesture was how he had always seen wildlings show affection, similar to how humans and elves kissed. “What was that about?”

Laughing and shaking his head, Greth got up and stumbled away. “Thought I lost you,” he said, wiping at his eyes. “My whole pack is gone, my friends are dead. I didn’t want to bury you, too.”

Raeln wanted to ask questions he was fairly sure he would not like the answers to, so instead he looked to the bloody mess that had been the dwarf. “Is he alive?”

Greth laughed openly. “I can’t even tell if he’s right-side out, Raeln. His weapons look to be alright, but everything else about or on him is crushed. Whatever that thing was, it wasn’t like the regular zombies we’ve been dealing with as city patrols.”

Raeln could not bring himself to go and look at the dwarf’s remains, and Greth wandered off to the edge of the tree line with his face covered. Greth seemed to be dealing with something and Raeln was too tired to question him about it. Instead, Raeln thought back to the fight, realizing the man had thrown the bag at him.

Searching the ground, Raeln found the small bag he had forgotten in the fight with the undead. Limping over to it, he picked it up and peeked inside, wondering what could have been so important the man had been more concerned with throwing it to a stranger than drawing his weapons to try and defend himself.

The contents of the bag were fairly unremarkable, at least to Raeln. He saw several folded pieces of parchment and a silver bracelet that might have been elven, given the style, though it looked to be worth little more than the metals it was made of. Certainly, nothing in there seemed worth risking oneself.

Raeln took out the bracelet and slid it over his wrist while he dug out the parchment pieces. He had no intention of keeping the bag, so he wanted to carry what he found as easily as possible. The dim sunlight flickered off some kind of engravings on the metal, but he had little concern for that.

After pulling out the parchments, Raeln realized he had one stack of bound sheets that looked to be fairly new, as well as a single sheet of folded parchment that was dry and cracking with age.

“What’ve you got?” asked Greth, coming over. He refused to look directly at Raeln, instead keeping his eyes on the parchments. Raeln swore he saw tears in the man’s facial fur. “Nice jewelry…not your style, though.”

Raeln snorted and untied the bundle of parchments. When he opened them up, he discovered that they were maps of the mountains, with Altis clearly marked, along with all of the major roads that served the city. Though the maps were made in a dark ink, smudges had been scribbled onto them with charcoal or dirt in many spots on every page.

“Troop movements,” Greth explained, apparently noticing Raeln’s confusion. “We stole a lot of those from Altis over the years. The dwarves were tracking where the Altisian army’s been going. Lantonne will want that information.”

Raeln went to remove the bracelet to show Greth. He tried to pop the clasp on the ornamentation and found it was stuck. He could not budge the piece of jewelry.

“We need to get going,” Greth advised Raeln once Raeln began following, giving up on the bracelet for the moment. “If any more of them are out here, they’ll start hunting us. We have to go farther out to avoid being found. Sorry, that’ll delay you getting back to Lantonne again.”

Raeln looked up at the nearly melted snow on the highest peaks and laughed. He had already been gone months, what was another few days? Ilarra could certainly take care of herself, and what he was doing out in the mountains had the potential to be far more important than babysitting his sister. Besides, Greth was good company and would always find another excuse to keep them out there, as he had each time they had the opportunity to return to Lantonne.

With all I have taught you, I still see anger and malice in the eyes of so many, including members of my own family. Trust in wisdom, not violence, to find an answer. When all else fails, use your might to crush those who will not stand down, but only when no amount of reason will calm your foes. We must never be the aggressors again, or history will remember us as conquerors rather than scholars.

To ensure this, the empire is to be dissolved. My wife will take the mantle of leadership among our own and help those lands we once held begin to grow and thrive without us. It is my hope that she will do what I could not and lead all of our people into an age of peace with our neighbors.

Though my wife’s temper is far worse than mine ever was, she understands the importance of peace and will put this forward as the greatest ideal of our people.

-
Later writings of Turess, now considered heretical by the Turessian council. Some historians consider this to be a forgery created by a rebellious slave for the purposes of lessening Turess’s image to later generations.

Warm sunlight poured over Ilarra as she sat in the middle of the fields at midday, enjoying the bright cloudless summer day. Weeds and corn stood tall around her, but she had pushed them aside enough that she was kept out of their shade. Growing up, she had tried to avoid direct sunlight—a small curse of elven heritage, she burned horribly, which was why most of the elven towns were built in sheltered areas such as woods—but the warmth was a welcome change, regardless of whether it might make her skin red and sore later.

Nenophar had kept her underground in the dank cave that seemed to be his home for days or weeks—how long, she could not be sure, though the weather had turned from the cool and wet spring to a dry and hot summer—teaching her to listen to the whispers in her mind only when she needed their magic or knowledge. He had shown her how to suppress them the rest of the time, pushing back their demands to make her head a quieter place, as it had been before she had begun to change. The efforts on her part helped ease the strain on Nenophar and allowed him to do more teaching and less quiet staring.

Aside from the isolation, it was the time passing that bothered Ilarra most. Nenophar claimed that her condition kept her from feeling time the way she once had. Judging by the change in seasons, she had to agree that she had somehow overlooked weeks or more.

When Nenophar had finally allowed her back into daylight, Ilarra had been shocked to find out how much the weather had changed. She had figured on a week or two, judging by the amount of food and water she had needed and how often she had slept. But when she had come out of the cave, it felt like summer was well underway. She had not asked again about how much time passed. It apparently would be a surprise from time to time.

“I don’t care what you say,” she continued, though Nenophar had not replied in an hour of her one-sided conversation. “My heart still beats and I can feel the sun burning my skin. There is no way I could have survived without eating or sleeping for weeks at a time. You did something to make me forget or sleep through part of the time.”

Nenophar snorted and said nothing, twirling a leaf by its stalk in his hand and watching it with far more interest than he was giving what she said to him. Whatever was on his mind made Ilarra nervous to see him so distracted. He had been quiet most of the time she had known him, but rarely lost in his thoughts.

Ilarra watched the sun slowly creep across the sky as she waited for the reason they had come to the abandoned farmhouse. Nenophar had told her this would be the last test he had planned for her, but had not explained the details or even what he meant by a test. That left her bored and wishing a cloud or two would pass overhead to give her something to watch.

“Are you sure this is the right place?” she asked, looking over at him expectantly. “You look like you’re waiting for something that hasn’t come.”

“I am sure. This field was built over an old graveyard that was plowed under long ago. There would be about a hundred bodies in the ground beneath us.”

Ilarra sat up straight and glared at Nenophar. “Why are we sitting in a graveyard…and exactly how do you know that?”

Smiling, Nenophar crushed the leaf in his hand. Looking up at Ilarra, he answered, “Because I killed the people who are buried beneath us when they tried to make me leave my home, before coming to their senses and sending their leader to visit me and discuss our differences. That was centuries ago, but I believe this is the only grave site in this region, which means it is precisely where we need to be.”

A not-so-distant cry of a startled bird made Ilarra jump and she looked toward the northwest for what had scared it. While sitting down in the corn field, she could see nothing but the stalks.

“Do whatever you must,” Nenophar told her, brushing dirt off his pants as he stood up. “Today, you will not be fighting anything alone. Make your decisions as you see fit.”

Ilarra got up slowly, trying to keep her head from poking up too far above the corn but wanting to see what was coming. As soon as she did, she regretted looking.

Spread across the plains beyond the weed-entangled crops that grew haphazardly around where she stood, dozens of shambling corpses marched toward her. They were spread wide across the flat ground, their slow pace gradually closing them in around the fields. Ilarra would be trapped within a minute or two, and already any attempt to run would be easily seen by the zombies. She could probably outrun them, assuming what she saw was all of them.

“Are you insane?” Ilarra demanded at little more than an angry whisper, dropping low in the field to keep from being seen. “There are thirty or more of them! You showed me the magic to stop or control one, but this is suicide!”

Nenophar nodded and peeked through the crops. “Hold back nothing, Ilarra. This is a test for us both. There is a Turessian with that group that is among their oldest and strongest.”