"For the Reaches!" someone near Rienne called out, and the rest of the charging warriors took up the call.
"For the Reaches!"
"For the Wood!"
Barbarians streamed toward them from both sides, having beaten past or broken away from the Eldeen soldiers that tried to hold the line. Several of the charging warriors slowed, readying to meet them, but Elestrissa urged them forward. "On to the Blasphemer!"
Lightning flashed in the sky, and Rienne looked up-half expecting to see a dragon breathing lightning down on them, half hoping to see Gaven's dreadful storm. Instead she saw Jordhan's airship skimming low over the battlefield, the fiery ring of its bound elemental bright against the smoke-blackened sky. As she looked, another bolt of lightning streaked down from a figure on the deck-Kyaphar or one of his druids, she supposed-and struck in the midst of a thick clump of barbarians, knocking them to the ground.
The barbarians closed around the heroes of Elestrissa's charge like the jaws of a dragon, roaring and howling as they swung their mauls and axes. Rienne was sheltered from the initial assault, surrounded by allies who prevented Maelstrom from meeting her enemies. Inevitably, though, the warriors on the edge of their ragged formation slowed, and as Rienne continued to advance she found room to maneuver, and Maelstrom began its whirling dance of death.
A plague-scarred barbarian thrust his leering visage in her face as she dodged his hammer's swing. His eyes went blank as Maelstrom bit through his flesh and found his heart. A shifter, his skin splotched with horrible burns, stumbled back, trying to dodge the flashing blade, but Maelstrom sliced through his throat and he fell on his back. A Carrion Tribe woman clanged two rough blades together in challenge, blocked Maelstrom's first slash, whirled forward in answer, then stopped dead as Maelstrom severed a tendon in one arm, took off the other hand, and finally sank into the barbarian's chest.
Elestrissa strode in front of Rienne, swinging her club back and forth in devastating arcs that sent barbarians flying away from her and crashing into each other, clearing a path to the Blasphemer. Rienne kept pace, but what had been a tight formation charging ahead started to thin as the warriors slowed to engage their enemies and some fell under the overwhelming tide of the barbarians. Maelstrom kept her moving forward even as it whirled and cut, jabbed and killed.
The elf just behind her, his two curved blades flashing in the firelight, stumbled as a barbarian's club swung low at his legs, and Rienne hesitated.
"Keep going!" he screamed at her, then the barbarian's club smashed his skull.
Maelstrom darted out and slit the Plaguebearer's throat, and Rienne left him sprawled across the body of the hero he had slain, the elf whose name Rienne had never learned.
Dragonfire leaped and roared at Kathrik Mel's back, adding its dissonant voice to the distant chorus down in Khyber. The howls of rage-filled warriors and the agonized screams of the dying sang his song of dissolution. The Gatekeepers' seal itself, groaning as its bindings weakened and broke, added voices to the song, a crescendo of chaos building to the inevitable climax.
He stepped forward, and the tread of his armored foot turned a new circle of grass to ash, adding the tiny dying breaths of the leaves to the grand cacophony. He looked down and saw a line of the seal, flaring with purple light in protest as the song tore at it.
The Blasphemer spoke a word that was no word, and fire erupted beneath his feet. Like lightning, the flames coursed along the ground, tracing the lines of the seal and igniting them. Fire licked the sky, burning through all the colors of the spectrum until it burned black and terrible.
The flames died, their fuel extinguished. The seal was undone, and the chorus of madness swelled in triumph. The keening voice surged louder as its owner rose to pass through the open doorway.
PART III
In the Time of the Dragon Below, the moon of the Endless Night turns day into night, and so begins the darkest night.
In the city by the lake of kings, the city scourged with his storm, the Storm Dragon becomes as the Devourer, and he opens his maw to consume the world.
Under the unlight of the darkened sun, the Storm Dragon lays down his mantle; he stops his song before it can be unsung, and so his storm is extinguished.
CHAPTER 31
Aunn gaped, trying to see past the deathless guard and up the stairs. Silence had fallen over the temple, and he was desperate to know what was happening on the upper floor. Why had Gaven killed an Aereni priestess? What was he doing here at all?
"You had better come with me," the soldier said, clutching Aunn's arm in his shriveled hand. His touch was ice cold and seemed to sap the strength from Aunn's muscles.
Without thinking, Aunn wrenched his arm from the deathless soldier's grip and bolted past him up the stairs.
The soldier shouted, "Stop!" and then something in Elven.
Revulsion and terror impelled Aunn up the stairs. He leaped out of the path of the guard's poleaxe as it swung at his feet, vaulting up a few more steps to the first landing. The guard was still shouting in Elven as he scrambled up the stairs behind him, jabbing his spear at Aunn's feet.
A few more guards stood at the top of the stairs. Mostly their attention was focused upward, looking at something on the next flight, though one woman was drawing a curved sword and shifting to block Aunn's way. Aunn hesitated, but a clatter on the stairs at his feet warned him just in time-he hopped up as the other soldier's poleaxe swept under him, and kicked down, trapping the weapon against the stairs. The haft broke with a loud crack, drawing a string of Elven curses from the guard.
The guard at the top of the stairs barked something to her companions, but whatever was happening on the stairs above them must have been riveting-they barely gave Aunn a glance before looking back up. The soldier below him shook the axe head free of the splintered haft and repeated the eerie growl he'd made before. Aunn still hadn't drawn his weapon-he didn't want to kill any of the guards, but he was starting to wonder, as rational thought reasserted itself, how he could get out of this mess without the use of his mace. Not giving those thoughts a chance to settle in, he charged up the rest of the stairs, keeping a wary eye on the curved blade of the guard above him.
Instead of blocking his path, the guard fell back from his charge, and Aunn saw the other soldiers around her fall to their knees, heedless of any danger. He cleared the stairs, put his back to the wall, and looked past them.
An elf woman draped in a simple gown descended the last few stairs, carrying Gaven's unconscious form in her slender arms without apparent effort. Her face was a mask of death, tattooed to resemble a stylized skull, but her eyes were green flames. The other elves had their faces to the ground, ignoring him, and he decided to follow their example rather than draw the ire of this being. She reminded him of Senya's ancestor in the City of the Dead.
Senya!
Aunn looked up, and the elf's fiery eyes burned into his. Her head was shaven clean, the skull tattoo obscured her features, and her eyes were not the sapphire blue they had been, but this was unmistakably Senya.
"I know you," she said. Her voice was not Senya's husky purr, but a cool, clear song.
How could she know him? Senya had never known what he was, as far as he knew.
"You were with this one and my daughter Senya in Shae Mordai."
The terror that had gripped him through their entire stay in the City of the Dead returned, a cold hand on his heart. As frightening as the haunted City of Night had been, years ago, to a young spy on his first mission, Shae Mordai had been far worse, a place where the undead walked openly among the living. Senya's ancestor had been the most terrifying part of a truly horrible day, for in the brief moment when the burning eyes in her empty sockets had met his gaze, he had felt himself utterly exposed to her. It appeared that, somehow, he was facing Senya's ancestor again-enshrined in Senya's body.