CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
Through Jepaul, Javen and Sapphire located the third gate in the outer aethyr, but very much closer to Shalah itself. They began slowly and laboriously to mount stairs that again had a life of their own and came and went, fading, re-forming, then becoming so faint as to be well-nigh indiscernible before firming so they could be ascended. It was bewildering and disorienting. They’d round a spiral of the staircase to find themselves left almost suspended at the top of a flight of steps and about to be precipitated into a black abyss. The men pulled back just in time. They became very wary. Javen cursed. Sapphire’s brows were hitched and his lips firmly compressed. There was a steely look to his beautiful eyes.
While they stoically climbed, Dancer and Knellen recovered enough to stand and assist with Belika and Ebon, Knellen more resilient than Dancer. The Dom was significantly weakened. Observing this, Jepaul spoke to Knellen.
“So far, Knellen, each Dom has been harmed.”
“Aye, young one, they have.” Knellen put a hand on Jepaul’s shoulder when the younger man abruptly sat, his eyes going from Dancer to Ebon and, with melancholy, to Belika. “Jepaul lad, we know the Doms are rejuvenated to a remarkable degree and they have extraordinary power too but they are ancient.”
“So are Sh’Bane and his Riders.”
“They have not carried the burdens of the Doms, Jepaul. It is so much easier to wander and wantonly destroy than it is to try to ensure the safety and security of a world. Think of the last syns. They have been hard for us, let alone the Doms.”
“You mean protecting me?”
“No, young one, protecting all of us, not just you, and don’t forget how they had to find us and get us to where we are at this moment. That was an effort beyond the understanding of Shalahs. And, Jepaul, they lost Ashken: worse for them was losing Islasahn, one who was a vital part of their very existence. It made them truly struggle. What has been asked of Sh’Bane?”
“Nothing.”
“Quon deeply troubles you, young one. I sense it.”
“Yes.”
“Then be reassured, Jepaul. He knows you are with him, maybe not at the point of confrontation, but certainly within him. Your rare bond with him offers him an untold degree of strength that will enable him to hold. And Saracen has unusual tenacity.”
“You believe that, don’t you?”
“Of course. And it was you who told us to believe, as Quon once told you to do, so now you must truly do so. For Quon, in particular, it will be critical. I know this.”
Jepaul looked up at Knellen in a long stare.
“I understand,” he murmured.
“And Belika recovers,” added Knellen gently. “Just as I did, minus much of her hair. So does Ebon though, like Dancer, he is marked and debilitated.”
Knellen’s hand tightened on Jepaul’s shoulder and as it did the Varen felt a hand come up to rest on his.
As Sapphire and Javen climbed, battle resumed on Shalah. This time the Nedru themselves led the attack supported now by increased numbers of hellions they’d raised and controlled for aeons, some of whom had been asleep. The Nedru had Varen with writhlings. And they had a citizen army likewise controlled by the creatures who were organised and driven by utterly ruthless Varen. Writhlings didn’t allow pity or mercy as they drove the Varen and all others.
Cefors hopped excitedly at the prospect of blood. Succubi salivated with anticipation as did Wraiths. Maekwies arrived in droves and hung en masse broodingly over the army. They were suddenly amplified by the sky darkening with the arrival of the first Sabbiths who’d got through a gate. To add to the horror other lesser hellions came in their train, appearing from nowhere. There were droves of them. The sky was almost blotted out by forms flying randomly or in rigid, highly disciplined battle formations. And they all answered to the Nedru who were nebulous figures in the front lines. They worked in a cohesive collective, their robes in constant motion and hands and heads bobbing energetically.
It was an appalling host that confronted all those inside and outside Baron/Kelt. Those in charge needed cool heads and calculating minds as they measured the awful odds against them. Every person was tense. Many felt sick with fear and dread. And all now knew that what they faced may be the end of the world they knew, each person grimly determined to go down fighting. The commanders were also acutely aware how much depended on a very small group who were absent but fought so hard for them – they guessed that what that group battled was both horrific and terrifying. It was more than any Shalah would confront. It made them determined that the Doms and Companions wouldn’t return, if they did, to either a rout or a total defeat especially after what they were enduring now for all those on Shalah.
When challenges were once more uttered and then answered, all Baron/Kelt rose up with defiance and courage. The fighting was something not seen or experienced on Shalah in aeons. At the moment the Doms knew Sapphire and Javen were at the third gate and had uttered their challenge, so they knew the battles for Shalah had begun elsewhere. Quon and Knellen called for the Grypans. Lesul answered with a full-throated roar. All Doms summoned those who were elemental on Shalah and aligned to them. Shalah awoke.
More and more Sabbiths arrived. The Sabbiths and Maekwies created havoc and carnage amongst the first ranks of the defenders, a situation the Cefors and Succubi used to advantage in ghastly ways. Metalaned Varen fought emotionlessly and with unremitting energy, stamina and a ferocity unmatched in their history. They seemed tireless. Other hellions descended on hapless Shalahs and tore them to shreds. People fell, ranks of them, as missiles flew backwards and forwards over the heads of the leading fighters and then fell among them.
Into this hell came the Grypans, hundreds of them, hungry with a burning anger at betrayal and exile. The Sabbiths turned to them. They expected the Grypans to both obey their orders and those of the Nedru. They assumed inserted writhlings, long dormant, would be re-activated now. The Sabbiths were therefore completely unprepared for the fierce attack of the Grypans who thundered with loud, ear-splittingly raucous roars to launch themselves at both Sabbiths and Maekwies.
Huge talons raked. Beaks ripped and tore. Rains and spits of burning acid scalded them and damaged Sabbith membranous wings. As Maekwies began to burn from acid so they uttered shattering shrieks, a dreadful cacophony in the skies as they tried to escape the hails of drops coming at them in swathes. The Sabbiths tried to protect their bodies from rending talons that tore chunks from long bodies endeavouring to coil from such devastating contact. They twisted and contorted in an effort to bite the Grypans. They found beaks facing their large toothed jaws. It was a fight to the death. The Sabbiths saw unmitigated hatred in shiny beady eyes that challenged them.
The Nedru, preoccupied with what occurred on the ground, were quite unaware of what went on above them. Nor did they notice the Grypans other than their arrival. They, too, assumed they’d come to support the Nedru. Their army pushed those from Baron/Kelt back and repulsed every surge the defenders made. It looked grim for Baron/Kelt. Then the defenders wondered why the push suddenly eased. Maekwies fell around them, crushing those beneath in their death throes as shaken fighters crawled out from under, bewildered and often stunned. They all saw Cefors begin to howl in the lines in front of them as acid drops caught and fried them, and they both heard and saw Succubi begin to wail as they lost form in their confusion.
The defenders of Baron/Kelt went back on the attack again. They were immeasurably heartened by the arrival of the Grypans and grateful for the respite that allowed them to re-form. It also gave them relief from the incessant bombardment of missiles and the viciously cruel onslaught of the Maekwies and the Sabbiths. They went for the Succubi as the Wraiths went in and out of shape. They chopped savagely at appendages in such a successful way that it cleared a path for the mimoses, the Maenades astride them, to finally reach their ancient quarry, the Cefors. They charged into and through them, shaggy heads bent to bite the creatures in half, decapitated
writhing bodies flung into the air amid strident mimose calls as they went. The Cefors clawed at mimoses’ legs and sides before they were deliberately trampled or were despatched by grim-faced Maenades.
The screeching of the Cefors, the wailing of the dying Succubi, the disoriented moans of scattered Wraiths flung to the ground, and the utter cacophony and mayhem in the skies was deafening and caused confusion on both sides. Bits of mangled creatures fell along with acid rain from above. There was the stench of burned or singed bodies and body parts and the ground was churned up as well as slippery with mud and blood. The Grypan’s acid rain caused complete disorder and panic, other than among the Varen, in the Red Council army ranks. Lesul was careful to order attacks on that army and not those from Baron/Kelt. But some defenders did suffer because by now the armies were inextricably mixed as the battles, all over the ground now, in some cases far beyond the city boundaries, ebbed to and fro.
It was only after hours of battle that the Nedru realised, with incredulity, that few were obeying their orders. Added to this disbelief was fury when they finally comprehended that their servants, the Grypans, actually fought against them. The Sabbiths, once overwhelming all opposition to them, found themselves still battling and grappling with the Grypans and were therefore fully preoccupied. The Maekwies, fighting with the Sabbiths, found themselves tossed contemptuously in the air by Grypans, their spines broken from the prior shaking before they plunged to the ground to die writhing.
The Cefors, suffering huge losses, tried to pull back both from the rampaging mimoses as well as the acid rain, the creatures tripping in their haste to run away from mimoses not inclined to let them go. They were relentlessly pursued and single-mindedly despatched one after another. The Succubi, relying on shape-shifting to fight, found themselves suddenly exposed and increasingly vulnerable. They were cut down in their masses, whirling objects with severed appendages that had no form as they swirled, stricken, in all directions. It was chaotic. They simply no longer responded to the Red Council.
Frustrated, the Nedru called for a lull in the fighting. A strategic withdrawal slowly began. The Nedru wished to reassemble the army. Badly mauled, the defenders did likewise, the Grypans hovering protectively over their retreat as they tried, as best they could, to retrieve their injured as they went. Any who hampered them got spat at. Many defenders had burns and far worse injuries.
Those from Strame/Helt had seen their Cynas, courageous and indefatigable in constant defence, snatched up in the air by a Sabbith, his dangling body cut in half by a frightening maw of jagged teeth before his remains were spat out and flung to the ground. Those from his city stood paralysed. It was Rule, seeing them falter, who rode across to them and raised the banner Barok once held high over his head, his voice carrying above the racket.
“To me, Strame/Helt! To me! For your Cynas!”
A ragged cheer went up and the men closed ranks behind Rule as he charged. His valiant attempt paid off as he pushed the attackers back, but he fell not long after in a hand to hand fight with an opposing Varen. And those of Clariane finally heard that Adon, scalded by acid drops and savaged by Cefors as he led a charge with mimoses to drive the creatures back, died in his son’s arms on the field of battle. The Grohols lost many but they took even more with them. The mimoses finally decimated the Cefors. Other smaller hellions that came at the mimoses and the Maenades and surrounded them were eventually forced back, the riding Maenades attacking each assaulting wave until the hellions, bloodied, hacked and many dying, drew back. Maenades and mimoses died, but not in great numbers.
Varen silently fought Varen. Those with writhlings answered the calls of the Nedru but, as fighting became looser and shards were lost, so was cohesion and rigid co-ordination. Knellen’s orders were specific. When cohesion among opposing Varen faltered, Lisle’s Varen and all other elite or senior Varen with the defenders were to go in for the kill. Distracted by the loss of order integral to Varen control, still, those with writhlings fought with commendable courage and fierceness.
But they also began to succumb to the metalans who now pushed them beyond their physical capabilities. They faltered, in disarray. Their agony, as they tried to obey but couldn’t, was a dreadful sight for defending Baron/Kelt Varen who had the unenviable task of putting them out of their appalling misery. It was done expeditiously and as humanely as possible. To later see the writhlings gorge on their dead Varen hosts made hardened men gag and cry. Defending Varen, sickened, actually vomited before they turned away.
At the point of withdrawal to retrench, Javen and Sapphire were in a battle of their own. It was a cruel one, like those before them. They were trying to see, through mists of haze, spout calphs that came at them from all angles and repeatedly tripped them whenever they tried to take a step forward. They were constantly driven back. It made them vulnerable to hail and ice fays. The fays slashed into them. They deliberately cut the two men wherever they could, ripping through clothes so they could attach themselves to bare skin, their needle-like fingers gripping and their small teeth biting. Blood dripped from the men.
The calphs continued to erupt and batter them. They were swirled one way then another, and round and round until they fell from dizziness even as they tried to keep their balance. The misty haze thickened so sight was impossible. Javen and Sapphire were blinded as they stood. When they fell, turbulent torrents dragged at them, one way then another, frothing over them so they couldn’t see to defend themselves against waterings. Waterings were snake-like creatures that pulled at their hair in an attempt to drown them, Sapphire especially vulnerable with his long mane. Their serpentine bodies also wrapped round legs and arms as long tentacles tried to strangle the men. Their plight was very real as they struggled, again and again, to get to their feet, each weakening with the effort simply to hold their own.
When they managed to get close together once more, standing uncertainly and gasping, they were confronted by myriad creatures that appeared through the thickening misty fog. They were tumbling, clawing things akin to snowflakes, but these had pincers that ripped and tore. They clambered all over Javen and Sapphire and caught in their hair where they bit the men hard as well as on the face.
It was only now, Sapphire able to even get his breath, that he and Javen called on the water spirits. The two men were barely recognisable. Their clothes were in shreds and blood dripped down their faces and coloured their beards red. The spirits came, hundreds of them, in blue and white. They were so fast in attack and so quick to dance and flit away, Tudeh’s creatures couldn’t catch them. They formed a protective shield about Sapphire and Javen, both men grey-faced. It was only now that Sapphire could dry his hands that were slippery with moisture and blood. It had made holding the staff very difficult. Several times it had slipped from his grasp and once Tudeh nearly kicked it away.
Sapphire now had a firm grasp on it. With his breathing easier and with a renewed surge of strength augmented by Javen and the water spirits, he swung the staff above his head and began to chant. As his chant rose in volume and constantly countered Tudeh’s, so the water creatures of the Rider’s began to mill in confusion as if what they heard actually hurt them and caused acute pain. The ice and hail fays were the first to be affected and they began to melt, their bodies trembling. The snowflake creatures did the same. The calphs began to lose force and form. Very slowly, they became liquid and started to evaporate.
The torrents, foaming, tumbling and churning, that hosted the waterings, stilled into pools. These began to slowly ebb in a way that dragged the snake-like creatures, wriggling and squirming, to cluster at Tudeh’s feet. Water began to rise about him as Sapphire’s incantation drowned out his. Javen chanted quietly behind him. His efforts were directed at constantly pushing back the minions he and the spirits had kept clear of Sapphire.
Tudeh found the serpentine bodies with tentacles began to clamber in panic about him and cling to his hair and clothes. Bellowing with embittered frustration a
nd his staff flaring above him, Tudeh was forced to retreat as Javen and Sapphire inexorably pushed him, step by step. Each step he took he was hampered by clutching creatures and rising water. Chants grew louder and stronger. Sapphire’s was more powerful than Tudeh’s.
Javen saw the gate open. Tudeh saw it too. His only hope was to reach it before the water and tentacles overcame him. He brought his staff down hard on the tentacles that fell away and flapped in the water, but the level of the water kept rising as his minions continued to melt. With a guttural snarl he swung round from the advancing Dom, Javen beside him, and with one hand grasped the gate. He just edged through it before it slammed shut. Any water left instantly evaporated.
Sapphire let his staff fall. Javen caught it, a trembling hand out to steady a Dom who stood motionless, his head hanging, his long hair and clothes sodden and rent like Javen’s. The two winked out, the spirits with them.
Jepaul, his arms about Quon, said nothing as Saracen stooped to Sapphire who lay quietly, the beautiful eyes closed and the face drained of any colour. The Grohol took the Ariel, wet but useable, from the Dom’s slack grasp. Quon stared at Sapphire for long moments. Javen lay as still as the Dom, Belika beside him, his hand in hers. Ebon, recovered to a degree, hovered with Dancer about Sapphire, Knellen down on his knees beside him.
Jepaul and Quon stayed quietly together. Then the younger man, his face set and eyes desolate, stood back as Quon shook himself. He again touched Jepaul tenderly, a hand up to the lovely face. He spoke softly.
“Time, Jepaul, time.”
“I seek for you, Quon.”
“Good lad. Let it be over, young one.”
“Quon -.”
“Nothing more, young one. I know and I understand.”
Jepaul nodded and turned away. His eyes filled as he sought the fourth gate, closer now and well into the inner aethyr. He found it. The stairs leading to it were very steep.
Quon and Saracen stood looking bleakly at steps that seemed to rise almost vertically to a distance that was barely discernible. The risers would be a huge effort for a Grohol and a much shorter Dom. Then Quon shrugged fatalistically and took a first step, Saracen at his heels. The ascent was more than arduous. Both men had to literally haul themselves up a step too steep for them to simply take a stride at each one, and sometimes they saw the shadow of Leth above them and heard his mocking laugh.
Muttering and grinding his teeth in his inimitable way, Quon, assisted by Saracen, reached two-thirds up the stairway. Both men breathed very heavily. Saracen sweated and Quon became increasingly weary with each riser he came to. The walls had closed in so it would be claustrophobic for other than Earth Elementals, the passage so narrow the men could only follow one another and so close to them they felt the moistness of the walls. Though the passage was highly vaulted, it was dark. The air smelt musty.
When the men paused rather breathlessly on a narrow landing, they saw the stairs below them slowly start to disappear. They knew they now had no option but to climb as fast as they could before those above them did the same thing. It became a cruel challenge. It was a frantic scramble and a very real test of fortitude as one man clambered then hauled the other, each step unbelievably steeper than the next. And with each step they took, the one they left dissolved into nothingness.
Saracen cursed to himself. Scratched and nearly exhausted, he extended a hand down to Quon who struggled to haul himself up with as minimal assistance as he could. Wheezing painfully, he grasped Saracen’s hand and finally landed, like a gasping fish out of water, at Saracen’s feet that stood four-square on a landing. As he did, where he’d been was gone. They’d reached the end of the spiral stairway. Quon lay still to allow his heart and breathing to quieten. Saracen was beside him, bent double as he, too, breathed hard and fast, his hands at a heaving diaphragm.
After a while both men got to their feet and Quon dusted himself down. It was in an unhurried manner that he took the Ariel Saracen held out. He nodded his thanks. He waited until he was assured they’d both recovered from the ascent, even taking out a flask from his pocket and offering it to the Grohol before he took several mouthfuls from it himself. Then he looked down at the book rested in a gnarled hand. Quietly, his hand stroking the Ariel, he spoke.
As Quon and Saracen waited patiently at the fourth gate, both armies on Shalah eyed each other, both having withdrawn. It enabled them to see the dreadful sights of battle fully revealed. Those in Baron/Kelt who couldn’t fight were busy with the wounded. The injured were carried to dormitories now set up as infirmaries, some underground away from the barrage of missiles that hailed down at times during battles. No one on Shalah could remember such injuries. They weren’t just battle wounds. And the eyes of those who’d been fighting had expressions so disturbing as to be profoundly frightening to the others who scurried about desperately anxious to be helpful and assuage suffering. The silence wasn’t the quiet of comfort or ease. It was the silence of those who’d experienced and witnessed unspeakable horrors.