The Book of Deacon: Book 03 - The Battle of Verril (50 page)

Myn touched down in the castle courtyard. The
inhuman guards who opposed them were reduced to ashes by a
carefully aimed blast of flame. Myranda climbed to the ground and
thrust her will at the door. A ripple of magic visibly distorted
the air, but it splashed uselessly against the door. Myranda
focused her mind and released another volley. This time the air
crackled, but still the door stood. There was a magic far more
powerful than hers set against her.

“Myn, can you get us inside?” Myranda
asked.

The dragon turned to the door. She retreated
until the gates of the castle wall were at her back, then slowly
lowered her head. Iron hard muscles under gleaming red scales
propelled the massive creature to frightening speed. When she
struck the door it was like a crack of thunder. Wood splintered and
creaked. Rust-encrusted metal twisted and warped. The very frame
that held the doors in place buckled, but they held. Myn shook her
head and retreated again. A second time the ground shook and the
walls shuddered, knocking free months old ice and snow. A third and
final charge hit like a battering ram. The ragged remains of the
door exploded into debris as Myn blasted through.

A red carpet slid and bunched under Myn's
claws as she tried madly to stop herself. Myranda rushed in after
her. This was the castle's entry hall. Once again Myranda found
herself in a place that, as a girl, she could only have dreamed of
seeing. Unlike her mad dash through Castle Kenvard, this place
actually met and surpassed the dreams of her youth. Intricate
tapestries lined the walls. War banners hung proudly. Suits of
ornate armor worn by kings and noblemen stood at attention between
massive, towering columns that disappeared into the darkened vault
above them. The air was warm, and the smell of burning candles
still hung in the air. This place was empty now, but it was alive.
Perhaps just minutes ago there had been servants and guards
here.

Myranda turned. Ropes had been thrown over
the edge of the wall. Boots scratched against the wooden gates of
the castle's outer wall. The hordes outside were fighting their way
past their own defenses to get in. Her eyes turned again to the
wonders around her. This was the true history of her people. The
very history that had been stripped from them. Marble was engraved
in ancient languages. Above the hallway leading into the castle
proper was a map of the world that still bore the old borders, the
old names. The world before the war. Here and nowhere else, the
identity of the north seemed to have survived, and it was about to
become a battlefield. Already it was scattered with the splintered
remains of the door.

“Myn, you won't fit through the hallway, you
have to stay here . . . but I have another job for you. You see
this? All of this? This must
not
be destroyed! Myn, keep
those soldiers from entering this place. I'll be back as soon as I
can,” Myranda stated.

Myn shot out the shattered door and planted
herself just outside, a predatory gaze focused on the wall. She
heard the echoing footsteps of her friend retreating down the
hallway behind her and longed to follow, but Myranda had spoken.
Her talons flexed in anticipation, splitting the stone of the
courtyard, and her mighty tail swept and coiled. The scent of the
enemy soldiers was in her nose. It was a scent she would never
forget. The D'karon creatures came in many shapes, but there was a
quality of the scent that never changed. It was out of place, not a
part of nature, and it was etched permanently in her mind. Dragons
have a long memory, and the scent of those that had killed her was
not one she was going to forget. She intended to return the
favor.

Deacon finally forced his way to a staircase.
When he'd wrestled the doors of the church open, he somehow had
expected to find it empty. What he found instead was a huddled
crowd of aristocrats and dignitaries. These men and women hadn't
known a moment of true hardship in their lives. The war was, to
them, a distant thing. Something others dealt with and hardly worth
noticing. Now it was on top of them. Deacon's arrival found them
pressed against the opposite wall, not a single one of them willing
to risk holding the door shut against the onslaught. When it was
clear he meant them no harm, the pleading had come. In the space of
a few minutes he'd been pulled in every direction, had half of the
kingdom offered to him, and had to turn down many a daughter and
dowager's hand in marriage in exchange for safe passage from this
war zone. It continued as the more desperate of them followed him
up the steps.

“Please,” begged a round, red faced man
dressed head to toe in silk. “I own a great deal of land. Help me
to escape and you may name your price. Be reasonable!”

“I mean to help all of you, now stay back!
This could get dangerous,” Deacon said, pulling free of the man's
insistent grip and rushing up the stairs.

The heavy footfalls followed him for a half a
dozen steps before wheezing to a stop and slowly thumping away
again. Deacon spiraled up the steps, urgency and duty driving his
failing limbs. Soon he was high enough that the battle was just a
distant clamor below him. At what had to be the top of the
precarious flight of stairs was a locked door. It did not remain
locked for long, the merest whisper from his skilled mind springing
the delicate mechanism open. He rushed inside. There were ropes
nearly as thick as his arm leading into the darkness overhead. He
cast a spell at the bell itself, but the massive piece of brass
barely budged. Reluctantly he grasped the heavy rope and heaved.
His feet lifted from the ground, and slowly the roped drifted
down.

The voices below rose in terror once again
and the sound of pounding footsteps echoed up the tower. In the
back of his mind he realized that he'd not managed to heave the
brace back into place. The bell thumped faintly. He leapt and
heaved the pull again. As a second weak ring echoed down the tower,
but as it echoed back up, it was joined by a familiar voice.

“Stop!” Caya cried as she finally made it to
the landing. “No need for that. The monst . . . the prodigy is
doing an excellent job.”

“Ivy? How?” Deacon asked, slowly releasing
the pull.

“She's leading them on a circuit around the
city, zigzagging through the streets. I've never seen anyone move
so fast,” Caya explained.

“She's changed . . . what color is her
aura?!” he asked urgently.

“Blue. Does it really matter?” the veteran
asked in puzzlement.

“Blue is fear. It doesn't last long. Please,
you've got to help me ring this bell!” Deacon begged, leaping to
the task again.

“I don't understand,” she replied.

“Ivy can only stay that way for so long. When
she tires she'll be helpless. They will tear her apart!” he
cried.

Caya dropped her sword and grabbed a hold of
the rope. Ivy was still a monster. She and Lain were malthropes.
From time immemorial they were enemies, the plague of humanity.
She'd never seen one before, but the tales of her parents and her
parents’ parents were vivid. Malthropes had blood on their hands
that Caya could not ignore. As a race they were the lowest of the
low. It didn't matter. Ivy may have been a monster, but she'd saved
the lives of Caya's troops. Both Ivy and Lain were putting their
lives on the line for a cause she'd devoted her life to. As a race
they were irredeemable. As individuals, they were godsends. They
were owed a debt that could not go unpaid.

After a third pull the bell rang out, clear,
and LOUD. The sound was bone rattling, knocking dust from rafters
and rolling over the city. Citizens cowering indoors raised their
heads. Undermine soldiers tightened their resolve. The dragoyles
turned their hollow eyes to a single point. In their unguided minds
the flaring blue form that had held their attention was instantly
replaced and utterly forgotten. Leathery wings nearly tore
themselves from their sockets in a frenzied rush to direct the
beasts at this new target.

Inside the tower Caya and Deacon retreated to
a lower landing, where a door led to a rooftop. Deacon threw it
open and stumbled outside, Caya behind him. He scanned the city
madly. There, at the far end of the town's main street, too many
massive black forms to count were making their way toward them with
maddened, mechanical thrusts of wings. Behind them, unnoticed, a
brilliant point of blue faded away. Deacon breathed a sigh of
relief.

“Thank you!” Deacon shouted between
tooth-shaking clangs of the massive bell.

“It was my duty! I only wonder why you'd
needed me! Surely your magic could have done the job,” Caya
cried.

“What?” he called out.

“I say, why couldn't you have used your
magic!?” Caya repeated.

“Haven't the strength. Keeping us disguised
and hidden during flight here, the shield, and now with no crystal?
I can barely think!” he admitted.

“You haven't . . . you . . . YOU MEAN TO TELL
ME THAT WE'VE JUST DRAWN THE ATTENTION OF EVERY LAST ONE OF THOSE
MONSTERS AND YOU HAVEN'T A SPELL TO CAST AGAINST THEM!” Caya raved,
pulling her sword.

Deacon nodded, fumbling through his bag.

“I can understand wanting to end your life on
a high note, but I would have appreciated a bit of warning! I'd
have preferred an audience for my death!” Caya fumed, as she
gripped the sword tightly. “Ah, well. At least we'll take a
building full of cowards with us! Shame it being a church!”

Deacon did not answer. Partially because
taking his hands away from his ears to rummage through the bag had
cost him what was left of his hearing, and partly because he was
busy running some calculations. He pulled the small, clear vial
from the bag and pulled it open, smelling it. It certainly smelled
like the substance he knew as moon nectar. He recalled the portion
of his education devoted to it. Collected from the leaves of
special herbs only on the nights of blue moons and eclipses, moon
nectar was nothing short of condensed, distilled magic. He hadn't
taken it from Entwell. Even in Entwell there simply wasn't this
much to be had. There was no telling where it came from, it would
have taken ages, perhaps thousands of years to collect this much.
Had he been more certain that it was what he believed it to be,
he'd have sent the bottle with Myranda. Now, well, if it turned out
to be poison, whatever death it might bring to him could only be an
improvement over the one heading toward him on rough leather wings.
One drop, he worked out, would provide him with all of the strength
he'd squandered and then some. His body might
just
be able
to contain the strength in two. Slowly he put the edge of the vial
to his lips.

“Trying to gird your loins? No sense being
genteel about it,” Caya said, quite literally to deaf ears.

In a smooth, practiced, and at any other
time, predictable way, she placed a finger at the vial's base and
tipped it up, pouring the entire contents down Deacon's throat. The
wizard silently swallowed. Even facing the death sentence it
represented, he would not allow himself to waste a drop. A moment
later the sensation began. It was a fire, though the word falls far
short, that burned in the center of his mind and the pit of the
soul and built. He shuddered as he tried to spread the effects,
feeling as though if he allowed it to remain concentrated it would
burn a hole through all of reality. The liquid had been the spark,
and his spirit the tinderbox.

“Strong stuff?” Caya asked, eyes wide as
Deacon turned slowly to her, his eyes already taking on a brilliant
white gleam.

“Get your men and bring them indoors,” he
calmly instructed, his unstrained voice louder than the bell and
gaining dimensions with each word, as though it echoed not through
space but time as well. “I do not know what is going to happen, but
it is going to be spectacular.”

With that Deacon paced toward the edge of the
roof and, without hesitation, off of it. Caya had opened her mouth
to warn him, but something about the crackling, glowing footprints
he'd left a few inches above the roof behind him made her realize
it would be a waste of breath. Reluctantly pulling her eyes from
the spectacle, she rushed down the stairs. Deacon hung past the
edge of the roof for a moment, then he was atop the tower. He
hadn't appeared to move at all, as though he'd remained still and
all of existence had shifted to accommodate him. Once in place, he
turned his mind lightly to a spell.

The mystic act reached Myranda as a distant,
brilliant flash of light. The flare was impossibly bright, somehow
gleaming through the stone walls of the castle. It lasted for less
than an instant, so briefly that she dismissed it, but she could
not dismiss its effects. Myranda's trip down into the heart of the
castle brought her against spell after enchantment after curse, as
though the very castle itself was composed of the blasted things.
They bored at her soul, pushed against her from all sides. But now
they were gone, every one of them, swept away by Deacon’s will. The
door ahead of her swung open.

A thousand questions and a hundred concerns
fought for a place in her mind, but Myranda ignored them. She could
not afford to waste this opportunity wondering if it was a trap.
Already the spells were slipping back into place and the door was
closing. She dove for it, gathering the might of her body and mind
to keep it open. It was enough to halt it, but only just, and not
nearly wide enough to slip through. Slowly the enchantment against
her strengthened and she began to lose ground.

Behind her, there was a whipping of wind.
Outside it might have been dismissed, but her mad dash had taken
her deep into the castle. There was only one explanation for such a
sound here. Myranda cast a look over her shoulder and saw the
swirling form of Ether rushing toward her. The shape shifter had
spent the last few minutes attempting to enter the castle. As a
creature of pure magic, Ether found herself far more affected by
the recently dismissed enchantments, and the look on her face made
it clear that she was in no mood to allow them to bar her way any
longer.