Halcyon Rising_Shadow of Life Page 6

  “I’ll go with her,” Mamba said. “Vix is too proud to admit if she’s growing tired, but the winds would never lie. I’ll make sure she doesn’t overdo it. Labor saved in early days saves labor pains on baby day.”

  “Literary genius?” I asked. “I know the feeling.”

  “Possibly,” Mamba said, stretching her arms overhead before reaching down to touch her palms flat against the floor. “It’s something I’ve heard the gypsy mommas say when they cared for pregnant women. It was their job to ensure a healthy pregnancy, all the way through delivery, which meant watching out for over-exertion. One of them might have been a literary genius, I never asked.”

  She wafted out the front door, lost in a dance and a dream that no one else could know.

  “I’ll get to work as well,” Yurip said. “But don’t anyone touch my checklists while I’m gone. I’m preparing a very important census questionnaire to find out exactly who’s here in Halcyon. It’s too many people to keep track of without paperwork.”

  “Cindra,” I said, “When Yurip is through zoning this place, I’d like you to help him work with Mayblin on minting gold for us. He has the coin mold and all sorts of rules about how to use it and how much gold we have to set aside to back the new currency. Mayblin and her horde of goblin miners are more than capable of extracting the resources that gave us a hard time before, including the gold, silver, and copper we’ll need for coins. With a little cash in our pocket, I’m hopeful we can buy up some supplies in Valleyvale after we’ve liberated the city. That is, if you’re up for it.”

  “Yurip works quickly,” she said, “but I’m sure I have time for a short nap. Don’t worry about me, I’ll be back at full speed in no time.”

  “I know,” I said, “I have complete faith in you.”

  You’re in an unnaturally good mood for someone about to die, Nola said. I think you’re in denial.

  I am not, I said.

  Yes, you are.

  Nuh-uh, I replied. I think you’re in denial about whether I’m in denial. So there. Now, I’d like to request some more seraph guardians. I know they take a lot of AP to summon, but we’ll need as many as you can whip up for our siege on Valleyvale. Would you mind?

  I’ll get to work, she said.

  I turned toward Lily and Ambry next. “I’d like you both to put together a squad of volunteers to take up arms and come with us to Valleyvale. Two dozen fighters, at least. Can you do that?”

  “Yes,” Lily said. “They know better than to refuse me and my little guillotine axe.”

  “No threats,” I said. “I want willing fighters. We have almost three hundred people here now, we can find twenty-four healthy volunteers.”

  “How soon?” Ambry asked.

  “Forging weapons, building towers, summoning guardians… a week?”

  “Great,” Lily said, “of course, everyone in Valleyvale will be dead by then.”

  “If we charge in there unprepared, we’ll all be dead,” I said. That gave me an idea. “Let’s see what progress we make in the next day or two, but in the meantime we should scout ahead to see what Kāya’s defenses look like. Up for a little trip?”

  +7

  I waited in Yurip’s office for Lily and Ambry to fetch their weapons.

  Arden, Nola said. You shouldn’t just leave, not now that you know what I know.

  How to rhyme?, I asked. No reason that should stop me.

  I mean that premonition.

  I’m leading our people into battle, I said. I can’t be distracted by the fear of what might — but also definitely probably won’t — happen. What I do know is that Kāya is in the midst of summoning the spectral second coming of Duul’s fallen army and we need to know how to deal with that if we don’t want this place to become a ghost town.

  Promise me you’ll be careful, Nola said. And that you’ll use the bathroom before you go. I don’t know how to change this future yet, but if you can’t pee your pants that’s a good start. I still feel guilty about showing everyone that part, but at least the girls didn’t make fun of you for it.

  Yeah, I said, but I feel like you just did by bringing it up. Again. The door opened. I don’t have time to dwell on that now. Lily and Ambry are here and they don’t like waiting around.

  “So,” I said, “when was the last time you girls traveled by portal?”

  “Never,” Ambry said.

  “The Free City Pact imposed higher portal fees on cities not paying tribute to the empire for protection,” Lily said. “While the network was still up and running, it cost a lot of gold for each one-way ticket between portal arches. The only reprieve was the empire’s portal subscription plan for unlimited portal streaming.”

  “Thanks to the mark Avelle burned onto my chest, we don’t have to worry about that,” I said. “How close is the portal arch to Valleyvale’s main entrance?”

  “A quarter of a mile southwest of the main gate,” Lily said. “There’s no reason anyone would be watching it with the network down.”

  “Perfect,” I said. “Follow me.” I clutched my polearm and led Lily and Ambry outside.

  A short walk from Yurip’s office stood our very own portal arch. It stood at the top of a set of stone stairs that led from the temple’s entrance up the rocky slope to the northernmost part of our hill, opening to the east — or to the west, depending on which side I activated it from.

  The stone arch itself was ten feet high at the capstone and ten feet wide at the base. I reached toward it and spoke my destination aloud. “Valleyvale.” The dark green statuette atop the arch, shaped like the goddess of safe passage Avelle, lit up as the space under it filled with a flat wall of green energy. I stretched one arm behind me so that Lily and Ambry could hold on, and touched the energy field ahead of me with the toe-end of my boot.

  The magic wall rippled like a pond against a strong wind. The tip of my foot disappeared for a moment, then the wall of green faded away, revealing the forest beyond and my boot, dangling between locations. The sun behind us in Halcyon’s sky streamed through the portal arch, brightening the ground miles away in Valleyvale’s forest.

  I took a deep breath and stepped forward.

  One moment, we were atop Halcyon’s hill. The next, we stood in a small grove between two ancient trees. Smaller trees surrounded the portal arch, with bushes and tall grass beyond. At the end of a quarter-mile dirt path sat Valleyvale’s surrounding wall.

  We wound through the trees for cover rather than follow the path directly. We approached the city at a diagonal, granting us a view of the featureless southern wall, and the front gates built into the city’s western wall.

  The gates had taken serious damage. The metal was scorched, and while the doors stood blocking the main entry to the city, they stood by leaning against the wall for support. It looked like they had been blown off their hinges and hastily propped back up after the siege was complete.

  Three archers were visible in each of the two defensive towers built into the wall itself and flanking the main gate. From there, they had an unobstructed view of the dirt road that led from the city’s gates and the hundred or so feet of flat grass that stretched ahead of the city’s front before the forest grew a thick wall of trees beyond.

  “Any other way in or out?” I asked.

  “Only above,” Ambry said.

  “As much as Vix wants to toss me like a rag doll from the end of a claw-arm siege tower,” I said, “it’s not happening.”

  “Then no,” Ambry said.

  “Good,” I replied. “We’ll knock those doors out of the way and charge into the city when the time comes. Then we’ll—”

  I squinted toward a small bush and saw a pair of deep blue eyes staring back at me. “Is that… a person?”

  A small blue man crouched in the underbrush. He shook his head slightly from left to right.

  “Yes,” I said, “there’s a person in that bush.”

  The diminutive man sighed and crawled out into the open. He dusted off
his brown shirt and pants and stood upright. He was three feet tall at his highest point, which were the tips of his dark blue ears. They rose a few inches higher than his short blue hair.

  “That does it,” he said, “I definitely overpaid for these sneak socks. I’m Greggin, with three G’s, and I’ll warn you right now, I can kill a human in three seconds flat.”

  “There’s no need for any of that,” I said.

  He exhaled deeply. “Thank the gods. There are three of you, and I only have two instakill runes on me, and each is only good for 500 health points of damage as it is, so if you guys are adventurers with high HP—”

  “We’re not adventurers, Greggin with three G’s,” I said. “What are you doing here? That city is under siege by a hostile god.”

  “I know,” he said, his eyes widening. “Can you believe my luck? This is the opportunity of a lifetime. But you haven’t told me your names.”

  “I’m Arden,” I said, extending a hand to see if he would shake it or back away. “And this is Lily and Ambry.”

  He raised his hand toward mine. I grabbed his and shook instinctively while he stared at my face, as if waiting for more.

  “Oh,” he said. “I forget you humans never spell. That’s okay, your names never had meaning anyway. Are these your wives?”

  “We’re sisters,” Lily said.

  “Sister-wives then,” he replied. “A friend of mine is conducting some research into that area, if you’re ever up for an interview.”

  Lily hurled a snowball at the small man, freezing him in place.

  “Lily!” I said. “You can’t just freeze people.”

  “He’s not just people,” she said. “He’s carrying instakill runes and skulking around my city, bragging about finding the place under attack. What are those deadly runes for? How did he get this far from the elf lands? Why is he here?”

  “We can’t ask him if he’s a block of ice,” I said.

  Ambry had already stepped toward the small man and activated Red Handed, melting the ice away from his immobilized body.

  He went into a full-body shiver the moment he regained movement, then said, “I probably deserved that. I get to talking too much and get into territory I shouldn’t. I do the same thing in class, much to my professors’ frustration.

  “You’re right though,” he continued, “I’m an elf, and I’m far from the elf lands, but I have a good reason. I’m a student at the Fatesong Divinity School working on my thesis, and I was exploring a lead I had found on the lost gods. There’s supposed to be an abandoned city in the mountains somewhere around here, which may be the last known location of one of the oldest deities in the pantheon — almost as old as Duul himself.

  “Anyway, I ran out of supplies before I found anything promising. From my view on the mountaintop I saw one village crumble to dust, but there was another nearby that I thought might sell me some food so I could try again.

  “That was before I realized there was an active battle for control of a temple,” he continued. “The temple changeover dynamic is rarely observed. I’d change my thesis topic in a heartbeat if I could get in there and learn more.”

  “Well you can’t,” I said. “Kāya is dangerous.”

  “The goddess of awkward moments,” he said. “Daughter of Sicord and Lonne. Her familiars are dastardly little things.”

  “Yes,” I said. “Bunnies. That blow up.”

  “No,” he said. “I’ve studied this. Exploding familiars are her father’s domain. Hers are just prone to eye contact that goes too long and sniffing at spots you’d rather not have sniffed at.”

  “Her father is dead,” I said. “She absorbed the power of chaos and blows up those rabbits for fun.”

  “Her familiars have learned a new trick,” he said. “No one has documented this yet.”

  “Somehow,” I said, “that’s not a priority for me. This is about to be the site of an all-out war. I suggest you go back to the elf lands. Just steer clear of Mournglory. It’s one of the places Duul is heading next.”

  “My normal route to Fatesong takes me through Mournglory,” Greggin said. “Visiting the temple there is a bit of a guilty pleasure. Hipna, the goddess of nocturnal remission!” He laughed like a schoolboy instead of an elfy schoolman. “Sorry, just a bit of divinity school humor. She wields power over sleep, dreams, and memories. And she’s very, very attractive.

  “You don’t think Duul could do any real damage there, do you? The yellow elves specialize in prolonging life and warding off death, but they won’t fight with weapons against an intruder.”

  “Duul took out Landondowns,” I said. “And that was a sprawling city with an army, a large population, and high walls. Underestimating him is a mistake.”

  Greggin frowned and pinched his blue hair, propping it up into a mohawk as he thought. “Getting home will pose some difficulty then. Unless…”

  “Unless what?” I asked.

  “Another god visited the city earlier this morning,” Greggin said. “Akrin, the god of passing time. What started as games of chance and skill evolved into a power to manipulate the passage of time itself. He could timeline me home if I could appeal to him.”

  “Let me guess,” I said. “He came to steal away residents while the city is in turmoil.”

  “It seems so,” Greggin said. “He timelined a number of residents out, then disappeared. I expect he’ll be back once his action points are full again.”

  “Timelining can be dangerous,” I said. “You’d still have to travel through Mournglory to get to Fatesong. If your timeline takes you into trouble in Mournglory, you’ll find yourself instantly transported only that far, stuck in whatever mess you were going to get yourself into. I’ve timelined. I still don’t understand whether I lost a week or gained a week from it.”

  “You’ve encountered Akrin before?” Greggin said.

  “I serve his daughter, Nola,” I said. “You must have heard of her.”

  “Goddess of clever insight,” he said. “Not the most promising power, but I’m sure she’s a nice gal.”

  “She’s more than a nice gal—” I said. I wanted to rail into this little twerp, to tell him that Nola had more brains and charm in her left nostril than he had in his whole tiny body, from his blue spikey hair to his tiny blue balls.

  “I mean it,” he said, “I’m quite sure of her innate goodness. She has a reputation as a real firebrand, but not one to rail against authority for the fun of it. She’s principled. A shining star among the pantheon in that respect.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Thank you.”

  His gaze drifted toward the archers that watched from the city’s two towers. “A new goddess of chaos… There’s no substitute for direct observation, but I really can’t take an arrow in the head right now. That’s the part I’m using to prepare my thesis argument.”

  He dug a small rock out of a pouch that hung from his waist. It was two inches long, one inch across, and looked porous and dry. He produced a chisel next and scraped a few strange glyphs into the stone. The whole effort only took a minute, but I was mesmerized by how expertly his little blue hands worked.

  “There,” he said. “Coincidence rune. Simple, but never dull.” He held the rune stone to his mouth and spoke a single word over its surface. “Zeiterestflugund.”

  The etching on the stone’s surface erupted in a warm golden light that crumbled the rock into tiny pieces. The second the rock fractured, a thunderous sound drew our collective attention to the front of the city. One of the large metal doors fell forward and landed flat against the ground, sending up a dust cloud in every direction. A handful of men emerged from the city, followed by two cretins. The men didn’t look gray-tinged and cursed. If anything, they seemed weak and afraid. They carried planks of wood through the doorway and deposited them into a pile next to the fallen door.

  “How did you…” I started to ask.

  “The timing is coincidental,” Greggin said. “When you need to stop all the nothing and
start some kind of something, this always does the trick. No telling what’ll happen though, and this isn’t exactly what I was hoping for.”

  One of the men dropped a pile of lumber, then turned back to stare at the trees. A cretin prodded his back with a short, black blade. The man sighed and headed back into the city while the two cretins took their post guarding the front gates against potential escapees.

  I crouched in the bushes, as did Lily and Ambry. We watched the city in silence as the dust blew away in the firm breeze, but the men didn’t return. Whatever they were going to build was still a mystery.

  “These are easy enough,” Greggin said. “It’s the deceptouflage runes that take real time. Let’s try again.” He carved another small stone and held it up to his face. “Zeiterestflugund.”

  A handful of men burst through the front gate, knocking past the two cretins that stood there. One man took a blade to the knee, forcing him to fall to the ground. Another man turned back to help him, but the second cretin leapt at him. Both men were on the ground in seconds, fighting a losing battle against Duul’s smallest minions.

  Greggin grimaced. “Not all coincidences are good,” he said. “Mind you, this mishap was always going to happen, it’s just that now it happened to happen just now.”

  “We can help them,” I said. “Five people, two cretins. I like these odds.”

  I shouldn’t say things like that. Saying things like “this fight looks manageable” always results in something totally unmanageable showing up. In this case, the two men that fought off voracious cretins succumbed to their attackers and fell limp, forcing not one but two rifts to open over their lifeless bodies.

  I saw her there, the breathtaking woman from the rift world. She held an armful of shining orbs whose spherical surfaces seemed to bulge and stretch as she struggled to keep them all still. The rifts began to pull closed on their own, two windows into a dark world sealing away a woman that had captivated my imagination.