Meilin felt a shiver in the air that made the hair on the back of her neck stand up. Briggan whined, his hackles raised, as though hearing the cry of an unheard song. Jhi, who was beside Meilin, seemed similarly agitated.
The Many had also stopped their approach, all of them tilting their heads up toward the Wyrm, which pulsed above the city like an oozing black sun.
“What’s happening?” Meilin said, adjusting her grip on her staff. “Why did they all stop?”
Kovo made a gesture beside her, which Takoda translated. “The Wyrm,” the boy said. “It’s speaking to them.”
She stared overhead at the pulsing polyp that was the Wyrm’s egg. Through the crack in its shell, she could see a red light glowing. The red light opened, like an eye, rolling back and forth and blinking. The egg shuddered, as if whatever was inside was struggling to break free.
“It’s waking up,” Meilin said.
The Many, all of whom had been distracted by the Wyrm’s movement, turned their attention back to the street. Their pale faces were twisted with animal hatred. Conor raised a thin finger, pointing toward Meilin. With a hideous, inhuman roar, the Many rushed past him and charged toward Meilin and Takoda, hands outstretched like claws.
Briggan bared his teeth, growling. Even Jhi seemed ready to head-butt whoever might approach.
Meilin knelt low, preparing for the first assault. She grunted, swinging her staff upward with a jaw-breaking crack against the face of her first opponent—a man in the ragged robes of a Sadrean elder. The man flew backward, falling to the ground.
With so many coming, there was hardly time to breathe, let alone change footing. Meilin brought her staff down without pausing, bashing a Sadrean boy who looked even younger than Takoda. A moment later, both the boy and the elder were trampled under the feet of the Many who had taken their place.
Takoda fought beside her with more passion than skill. In a surprising display of strength, he swung Kovo’s iron mallet over his head and brought it down with a terrible crunch. The mallet weighed nearly as much as the boy, and his swing was strong enough to topple a trio of the Many, who flew backward, unconscious.
Briggan had managed to fell half a dozen already. Meilin could not take time to note whether or not the injuries the wolf inflicted with his jaws were fatal. Nor could she contemplate how she might feel if they were.
Meilin rolled across the ground, knocking out a man who very nearly managed to grab Takoda from behind. She felt a slithering sense of horror as she realized that one of the Wyrm’s parasites had managed to attach itself to her neck. She ripped the thing off and flung it into the shadows.
“Get to higher ground!” she called out, springing to her feet. “We need to rekindle those glowstones and keep them at bay.” She leaped backward to some fallen rubble on the blockade.
Jhi, meanwhile, had taken it upon herself to amble directly into the fray and lead off a faction of the Many, who pursued the panda with blind fury. Meilin watched from her new height as Jhi led them straight off the edge of a rocky ledge that opened into a deep well below. Dozens of the Many followed Jhi into the water, sputtering and splashing to keep from drowning.
Meilin grinned and touched her arm. A moment later, Jhi’s mark appeared on her flesh. She pressed it again and Jhi appeared at her side, soaking wet and looking quite proud. “Nice work!” she said. “Care to try it again?” Jhi scrambled down from the barrier to lead off another group of the Many. Meilin watched her spirit animal rush headlong into danger, marveling at how she could have ever doubted the Great Panda’s courage.
Meilin kicked her boot at the hand of a grasping man who looked like he was some kind of warrior. She brought her staff down on another, a woman who might have been beautiful if she hadn’t been pale and hairless.
The Many were not strong, but they fought with absolutely no regard to personal safety, which made them relentless in their assault. However many Meilin knocked down, twice that number appeared a moment later. The fight was made even more difficult by the fact that the only light available was from the silvery roots of the Evertree. Meilin was battling an army of shadows.
“How are those glowstones coming?” Meilin shouted to Takoda, who was somewhere behind her.
“Gone!” he cried. “Conor shattered them all. We’re out of light.”
“That’s just perfect!” Meilin said, ducking as Briggan leaped over her head to attack an approaching Sadrean. She recalled that Jhi was somewhere in the city, having led off another group of the Many. She had forgotten all about her! When she summoned Jhi into passive state, and then to her side, she saw that the panda’s right haunch was red with blood. “Stay close to me,” she whispered. “You’ve done more than enough.”
Meilin scanned the slack faces before her, looking for Conor. Searching farther down the street, she saw that the boy had not charged the barrier with the others but had instead climbed up to the top of a small footbridge.
From there, he was now directing the rest of the Many like a general—pointing straight at the bell tower.
“Conor’s leading an assault against the tower!” she called. “We have to stop him.”
Meilin wished she had the ability to throw something far enough to knock Conor from his perch. She looked around for Kovo, but the gorilla was nowhere to be found.
“Takoda!” she cried. “Can you summon Kovo? We could really use an extra pair of fists right about now!” Kovo had single-handedly fought back the Many at Phos Astos.
“I’m trying, but it’s not working!” Takoda shouted, wrenching his mallet free from a man who had grabbed hold of the handle. “He ran inside the lighthouse, telling me to seek shelter!”
“Seek shelter?” Meilin said, taking out a pale-faced old woman with a roundhouse kick. “Now’s not really the time for retreat!” Even as she said this, she could feel Jhi’s muzzle on her side, pushing her backward toward one of the crevices in their stone barricade. “What are you doing?!” she shouted, tripping over the back of her cloak and falling onto flat stone.
But then, up above her, she saw a dark figure standing atop the roof of the lighthouse. It was Kovo, and he was holding an enormous clay urn over his head—one of dozens that he had been collecting from all across the city over the last few days. A curl of black smoke leaked out from the mouth of the jar.
“Get back!” Meilin cried, her eyes widening.
With an earthshaking roar, the Great Gorilla hurled the urn toward the street below. It struck the ground with a crash as it burst into a ball of red flames.
The Many howled in pain at both the light and the heat as the fire raged in the street—scattering them in all directions. But Meilin’s sense of triumph was over as soon as it had sparked when she looked to the bridge where Conor had been standing only a moment before—now a pile of burning rubble.
Briggan whined beside her and made to leap into the flames. Meilin grabbed his scruff, stopping him from finding his human companion. “You can’t!” she cried. “We need you here.”
The ruined city echoed with the moans of the Many as they scrambled to reach the shore and douse the flames that had engulfed their bodies. Already Kovo had raised another urn over his head. It came down with an explosion even bigger than the last, sending the horde even farther back.
Meilin scrambled to her feet, feeling a new hope swelling in her breast. There were at least twenty urns of oil in their tower—enough to build a flaming barrier around the middle of the city. That might at least buy them time to rest and recover, until they formed a new plan.
“We need to use the flames to create a perimeter around the bell tower—to cut them off from approaching.” She turned to Takoda. “Run. Tell Kovo to throw one urn at every major inroad.”
Her hope in victory, however, was short-lived. Meilin heard a snarl at her feet, and she glanced down just in time to see a black hand burst from the rubble and grab her ankle. “Ahhh!” she cried, as the hand pulled her toward the flames below. Meilin grabbed her sta
ff and brought it down—so hard that it snapped in half against her attacker’s head. Her assailant, however, was undeterred. He grabbed her with his other hand, pulling her closer to the consuming flames. And when Meilin looked upon his face, the fight went out of her.
“Conor,” she whispered, for indeed it was. He stared at her with his dead-dark eyes, his skin charred and burned. The parasite burrowed into his brow was pulsing—it throbbed just beneath the skin like a second heart.
With a roar, Conor flung Meilin aside—showing more strength than she knew him to possess. It must have been the power of the Wyrm coursing through his veins.
Briggan growled and charged Conor, biting down on the boy’s leg and pulling him away from Meilin. Conor stumbled down to his knees without crying out, kicking and fighting to get free of the wolf’s jaws. But the damage had already been done. With Meilin and Briggan so distracted, there was nothing to stop the charge of the Many clambering up and over the flaming barricade. Despite the excruciating pain of the flames, these mindless captives were undeterred, using their own bodies to smother the fire so that those behind them might continue their assault.
Meilin felt Jhi beside her, tending to the burns on her leg where Conor had grabbed her. She watched, helpless, as hundreds of the Many charged straight through the flames, flowing into the center of the city.
Kovo hurled more urns in a desperate bid to stop them from reaching the spire, but it was useless. The Many cared not for their lives. They clawed at stones and bricks and bannisters—trying to rip the bell tower apart with their bare hands.
“It’s over.” Meilin felt the sting of smoke in her eyes as she blinked away hot tears. They had traveled all this way, sacrificed so much, only to fail in their task. And in that failure would come the destruction of all of Erdas. She clung to Jhi, burying her face in the panda’s warm fur. “There’s just too many of them.”
“Well then,” said a voice beside her, “maybe we should even the odds?” Meilin looked up to see Takoda, who, despite being covered with bruises and burns, was breathless and wide-eyed. “I think our prayers have been answered.”
Before Meilin could ask him what he meant, she heard a shrill whining sound out in the distance. It was coming from the direction of the water. Meilin stood, recalling that piercing cry, which she had only heard twice before, while defending the walls of Phos Astos from the Many.
“Screamers,” she said, speaking the name of the peculiar mushrooms that the Sadreans had used to defend their perimeters.
The sound was even louder now, so loud that the Many took leave of their work in the city square and turned toward the water—from which direction shone a dazzling pinkish light that cut sharp shadows across the streets. Meilin stood and shielded her eyes from the glare. At the water, she could see a dozen galley ships riding the dark waves to shore—all of them bearing enormous glowstones at the helm to light their paths. On the decks stood dozens of Sadrean soldiers, all of them wearing glittering crystalline armor and holding crystal swords and axes.
Even at this distance, Meilin could see the glint of determination burning in their pink eyes. And there, at the front of the prow, the small figure of a girl bearing a long spear. The girl’s face was hidden behind a crystal helm, but Meilin could see clearly enough the glowing paw print showing on the breast of her tunic—a mark that Kovo himself had given her after their first battle in Phos Astos. “It can’t be,” Meilin whispered.
“It’s her,” Takoda said, the smile nearly splitting his face. “It’s Xanthe.”
HAVING BEEN RAISED IN A MONASTERY, TAKODA HAD been taught to see tiny miracles in the world. But these were always small things. A rainbow cast off the glint of a dewy spiderweb. The first cry of a newborn babe. The music of a stream as it rippled by.
In this moment, however, as Takoda looked out past the rippling flames and saw Xanthe’s face approaching from the sea, he finally understood what it was to behold a real miracle.
“She’s alive,” he said, barely able to form the words.
“And more important,” Meilin said, standing beside him, “she’s brought an army!”
Already the ships had reached the shore, and soldiers were racing down the gangplanks and into the city streets, weapons raised. The Many had greater numbers, but the Sadreans were well-armored and fierce. They fought with the might of a population that had survived the crucible of battle, only to emerge with newly forged strength. Xanthe herself fought as bravely as any of them, using her crystal spear to impale the Many who got in her way.
“Xanthe!” Takoda shouted, running to the top of a smoldering staircase and waving both arms over his head. “Over here!”
Xanthe turned her head and saw him. The girl’s face broke into an astonished smile. There was a glint in her pink eyes that made Takoda’s heart beat out of his chest. “You’re alive!” she shouted, racing to meet him.
“I can’t believe you found us!” he exclaimed. “How did you survive the Webmother?”
Xanthe shrugged. “I’m a Sadrean wanderling. Surviving the tunnels is what I do best.” She was breathing hard from the fighting. “Besides,” she said, looking down to the ground, “I thought you might miss me.”
Takoda’s mouth fell open. He didn’t know what to say in response. There was something about the way Xanthe had said this that made him think maybe she felt the same way about him as he felt about her. “I … um … ” He swallowed, his cheeks flushing.
Takoda was saved, as it were, by an interruption in the form of a loud crash. The battle was still raging around them, and hundreds of the Many had broken through the flames and were now scaling the side of the bell tower, tearing at the stonework and buttressing. They had just succeeded in breaking the masonry around one of the tower’s lower turrets, which had fallen free from the main tower and crashed to the ground.
A huge cloud of dust filled the air. Takoda coughed, reaching out a hand to steady himself. His fingers found what he realized too late was Xanthe’s hand. “S-sorry!” he stammered, pulling away. “I—I—I couldn’t see.”
“Then you should stay close,” he heard Xanthe say, and the next moment he felt her hand take his own, their fingers entwining between one another. Takoda found himself grateful that the dust obscured his cheeks, which had begun shining brighter than any glowstone.
“Enough chatting,” Meilin said, appearing in the thinning dust. “We have to stop the Many from destroying that bell tower.” She crouched and swept her staff across the ground—tripping a flaming man on his way toward the city square.
“That tower is part of Kovo’s plan to stop the Wyrm,” Takoda explained to Xanthe. “If it falls, we’re lost.”
Xanthe stepped away from Takoda and raised a sort of horn made from a hollowed-out mushroom. She blew into one end, releasing a battle cry. “Protect the tower!” she cried. Soldiers streamed past her, running to the center of the city. They fought with determination and fury, cutting through the mob and forming a tight circle around the edge of the tower.
The Many were defenseless against the glowing crystalline blades of the Sadreans. Every cut seemed to scald the very flesh of those infected by the parasites—causing them to collapse to the ground, clutching their wounds as though they had been burned.
When the base of the tower had been secured, a small troop of white-haired slingmaidens positioned themselves on the remaining turrets, and they used the slings to launch glowstones on the Many below, driving them back into the shadows.
When the last of the Many had been vanquished, the Sadreans let out an enormous ululating cry that echoed in the caverns below. The sound was so strong that it made the roots overhead tremble, which in turn made Takoda tremble.
Conor, who had fought even more fiercely than the other Many, had finally been restrained by two burly Sadrean shieldwardens. They bound his arms behind his back and brought him to Meilin and Takoda. Briggan remained by their friend’s side, while Jhi moved between the Sadreans, tending to their wounds as
best she could.
“We only found the city just in time,” Xanthe said, running to meet Takoda. “If those yellow flames had not appeared on the horizon, we might have gone off course and impaled our ships into the stalagmite reefs.”
Takoda smiled, turning toward his spirit animal, who had positioned himself at the mouth of the tower—his great fists clutching the iron mallet, his small eyes trained on the Wyrm overhead. “The fire was Kovo’s idea. He used it to drive back the Many.” He shot Meilin a look. “Maybe you should thank him for saving our lives?” He still remembered the harsh things she had said about Kovo back in the lighthouse.
“I’ll thank him when this is over,” Meilin said darkly. She was still watching Conor, who seemed to have calmed down. The boy stared back at Meilin with empty, wrathful eyes. “Keeping this tower safe is only the beginning of this fight.”
Xanthe stepped away from Takoda and knelt in front of Conor. “I’d assumed that you had abandoned him when he turned too far. That you carried him with you, even like this … ” She looked down, and Takoda felt a pang of guilt. It was Xanthe who had been abandoned. And it had been his fault.
Conor gave a sharp snarl, lunging for Xanthe. The girl screamed, falling backward. The Sadrean shieldwardens kept him in place, but it was clear that something had happened to set him off. The possessed boy lurched up from the ground. All traces of the modest shepherd Takoda had first met in Nilo had vanished. Now he looked almost as inhuman as the Many. Conor snarled and hissed, staring upward with his dark eyes.
Briggan whined, backing away from his human partner.
“What’s Conor doing?” Meilin said.
“Whatever he’s doing, he’s not alone.” Xanthe pointed toward the shadowy city. “Look.”
Takoda peered past the glowstone perimeter and saw that the surviving Many had emerged from the shadows, their long teeth flashing in the dim light as they all opened their mouths and made a sort of moaning sound. But they were no longer looking at the Sadrean army, or even the bell tower.