The mayhem rolled in from the sea, spitting fire and ice, drenching Elcho Falling and the surrounding landscape in pelting rain. The wind was not as bad this time, but it was still a terrible storm.
Eleanon and Falayal watched it approach. Both wore irritated expressions, but neither looked particularly worried or angry.
“Well, it surprised me Isaiah left it this long,” Falayal said. “I’d expected it yesterday.”
“Perhaps Isaiah is growing old,” Eleanon said, “and mayhap grows weak. This doesn’t look as terrifying as that one he summoned during the battle.”
“But bad enough. We’ll need to leave soon.”
Eleanon nodded. “Do it now,” he said. “There is no need to linger. Fly an hour to the north. You shall be safe there. This storm is only very local. Return once it is calm.”
“You will be safe?” Falayal said.
“You wouldn’t be pleased to see me gone?” Eleanon replied.
“Don’t be foolish, Eleanon,” Falayal snapped. “We’d be lost without you.”
And pray you don’t forget that, Eleanon thought.
“Keep well,” he said, “and so shall I. And by the time this is done, you can be assured that Isaiah will never, never summon a mayhem again.”
Falayal grinned at Eleanon, then he was gone. A few minutes later the Lealfast Nation rose into the approaching winds, veering northward.
Axis watched the Lealfast leave, feeling some deep satisfaction that the storm forced them to flee.
He wondered how often Isaiah could summon these mayhems.
But for now he stood in the chamber which held the pool leading to the underwater escape from Elcho Falling. Apart from Inardle, who stood before him, the chamber was empty.
There were cracks in some of the walls, though. It would not be many more days before the Dark Spire broke through to this level, likely destroying this chamber in the process.
“Be safe,” he said to her. They were standing close but not touching, and Axis was feeling awkward. He hated goodbyes, and he had a terrible feeling that Inardle might not come back — or at least not as someone who would want to be his companion.
She smiled. “I will be safe. I do not fear the Skraelings.”
“Still .”
She leaned into him, their bodies touching in myriad places, and they kissed, softly.
“You are a different person, now,” Axis murmured as she leaned back.
“Which do you prefer, Axis? This, or the other?”
“Come home,” he said.
“This is not your home,” she replied, the waters shifting behind her eyes, and with that ambiguous reply she turned away from him and disrobed. She gave him one last, long look over her shoulder, then, before Axis could say anything else, turned into a column of water, which then crashed into the pool.
This is not your home, she had said, and Axis stood there for a long time, staring at the blank pool, feeling terribly lonely and dislocated.
Eleanon had escaped into invisibility as the Lealfast Nation left, and secreted himself within the reed banks surrounding the eastern shores of the lake. He would get wet, violently wet, but the thick, tall reeds would give him protection against the ferocious winds.
The mayhem hit suddenly, forcing Eleanon to grab onto thick bunches of reeds to keep himself from being blown away and sucking the air from his lungs. For long minutes it was all Eleanon could do to breathe and keep himself within the shelter of the reeds, but gradually he became used to the wind and the driving rain and managed to settle himself in among the reeds in such a manner that he no longer needed to fear being blown away.
He was drenched, and the sheer force of the storm had stripped away his cloak of invisibility, but that no longer perturbed Eleanon. No one in Elcho Falling could possibly see him through the thick, sheeting rain.
He relaxed, communing with the mayhem, seeking to understand it amid all its twists and secrets.
It was not, for one as skilled as Eleanon, all that difficult. The mayhem was a very basic enchantment, although one wrought with a vast power that Eleanon could not match.
Matching that power did not worry Eleanon.
All he wanted to do was reflect it.
Eventually, even as the storm worsened about him, Eleanon began to grin.
Then, he began to commune with the Dark Spire.
Deep within the Dark Spire, the One concealed himself from Eleanon’s power. It was easy enough to do and he did not want Eleanon realising his presence.
If Eleanon knew the One had returned, he’d not do what the One wanted, which was to continue to aid the Dark Spire.
The One lurked in the shadows of his power and listened to what Eleanon whispered to the Dark Spire.
He grinned. It was a shame Eleanon would eventually have to die, for he was gifted with a fine sense of humour.
There were several Enchanters, as always, hovering about the Dark Spire deep within Elcho Falling. They were there to watch it and, in the most hopeful of universes, to glean some understanding of it.
They were also here maintaining a watch lest the One’s presence grow closer.
But for today, as for the past few months, there was nothing they could learn.
One, an Icarii named StarSlider, had just decided he would return to one of the higher levels in the citadel when he paused, frowning at the Dark Spire. There was something odd . . . StarSlider couldn’t quite place it and he was about to call out to the other two Enchanters present when he stopped, mouth agape.
Storm clouds had gathered about the spire’s peak.
“Spring—” StarSlider began to call to one of his companions, SpringStar, but suddenly lightning forked out of one of the clouds and struck close by him.
StarSlider jumped out of the way, then cried out in horror as torrential rain swept him off his feet and toward the Dark Spire.
The mayhem had come to visit within Elcho Falling.
Completely unaware of what was happening behind her, Inardle merged with the water as she entered the underwater tunnel, moving with it and through it until she entered the lake. Here she paused, looking around.
Above her, the surface of the water was pockmarked by the driving rain — Inardle could see each individual droplet of rain drive into the water, briefly creating a long foaming tunnel before it lost its energy and merged with the waters of the lake.
Far beneath her Inardle could see the ‘roots’ of the Dark Spire lying along the bottom of the lake. They were longer and thicker than she remembered and she wasted a moment wondering for what purpose they were intended, and for what purpose they might be used.
What would a River Angel do with those long, black, tapered fingers?
Finally, Inardle looked toward the entrance of the channel to the sea.
The water was still murky from the settling boulders, but Inardle could see that the channel was now well over halfway blocked.
Another day, once this mayhem was done, and the Lealfast would have completed their task.
A sigh ran through her being and Inardle turned for the lake’s edge. She could not afford to waste any more time for Isaiah had told her the mayhem would be sharp and furious, but not lengthy.
At the edge of the lake, Inardle flowed onto the gravelled edge of the land. She moved fast, a writhing stream of water that, in this storm of raindrops battering into the ground, was virtually invisible.
She slithered as fast as she could, working her way over the dips and cracks in the earth’s surface, following the natural contours of the land.
Axis had been climbing the main staircase toward the command chamber, needing to speak with Isaiah, but within the space of a breath he was pummelled to his knees, gasping for breath as howling winds and driving rain filled the interior of the citadel.
He couldn’t understand what was going on — had the walls of Elcho Falling been breached? Water began pouring down the stairs and Axis was swept to one side. He grabbed at a newel post and wrapped his
arms around it for support. Several soldiers, less fortunate than he, tumbled past him in the torrent of water.
What was happening?
Eleanon has reflected the mayhem inside, Isaiah said in his mind.
Stars! Axis tried to think, shaking water off his face in a useless attempt to stop the rain-blindness. Isaiah, he said. What can you do? Can you stop the mayhem?
No, came the response, and Axis cursed. He began to inch his way up, grabbing at the newel posts, pushing with his feet, slipping every so often but hanging on grimly as the water raged past him. Above the noise of the storm he could vaguely hear shouts and thumps — people doing whatever they could to escape the mayhem.
At the next landing a hand reached down to grab him.
It was Georgdi, with a rope about his waist which extended back into one of the chambers running off the central staircase.
Georgdi was shouting something, but Axis could not make it out. He just gripped Georgdi’s hand and slowly the two men, aided by someone unknown keeping a firm pull on the rope, worked their way into a chamber off the stairwell.
Here it was a little calmer — the wind and rain still bore down on them, but at least they were out of the raging torrent of the central staircase.
Georgdi shouted something almost unintelligible at Axis, which Axis interpreted as What the fuck is happening?
Axis gestured uselessly, then, pulling Georgdi as close as a lover, shouted in his ear, “We’ll have to ride it out!”
Georgdi nodded understanding, and then the two men and their companions huddled in the shelter of the door and a large table as the mayhem screamed about them.
Throughout Elcho Falling men and women sheltered from the storm as best they could. Water from the torrential rain swept down corridors and tumbled down stairs in rushing waterfalls, semi-filling lower chambers before slowly draining out into the lake via sewers and pipes in the citadel’s walls. Someone had the foresight to open the doorway in the great entrance arch and water cascaded out the opening as if from the bursting of a great dam.
In their top chamber, Ishbel and Maximilian were no luckier than anyone else. They sheltered in the lee of a closet, watching in disbelief as all the charts and diagrams and notes that they had made about the contents of the Twisted Tower were swept away.
The One? Ishbel said in Maximilian’s mind.
No, he replied. Eleanon.
Privately, he wondered if Axis and Isaiah could manage the Lealfast, and, as the storm swept on and on, drenching and ruining every piece of furniture in their once-lovely chamber, Maximilian had to fight to believe that something postive could be done, and that there really wasn’t any merit in the idea of just abandoning Elcho Falling to whatever Eleanon wanted of it so he and Ishbel could live out what remaining months they might have in some distant, sunnier and drier land.
At storm’s end, almost two hours later, Inardle was very far away, still unknowing of what had happened behind her.
Eleanon sat among the reeds, revelling in the sun as it peeked its way through the dissipating clouds, staring at Elcho Falling and imagining the chaos within.
He shook out his wings slowly, spreading them to dry in the sun, confident that that was the last mayhem Isaiah would summon in a very, very long time.
Chapter 8
The Outlands
Inardle found the Skraelings far, far sooner than she had thought. She’d returned to her Lealfast form once she was well away from Elcho Falling, flying south high and fast, putting as much distance as possible between her and the citadel before the Lealfast returned to it after the mayhem. She’d thought to have needed to have travelled many scores of leagues, but in fact she discovered the Skraelings not four hours south of Elcho Falling. She was flying over the gently rolling grassy hills, enjoying the sun, when, quite abruptly, the entire herd of Skraelings had materialised below her.
Inardle actually gave a small cry of surprise. She slowly, carefully, spiralled down toward them, landing on the grass some ten or twelve paces distant from their forward edge.
She looked them over — they were very, very different to what she had last seen. Most had reverted to their usual Skraeling form from the gross monstrosities their association with the One had warped them into, but a few . . . a few seemed to have altered further yet. Their huge silver orbs had become much smaller and more elongated and were grey rather than silver, while both their clawed hands and their once-terrible fangs seemed almost mild in comparison to what once they had been.
One of their number, one who had undergone such change as to appear almost handsome, rather than repulsively ugly, stepped forward.
“Inardle,” he said, “we have come to meet you.”
Inardle stared, recognising the voice before she recognised the form. “Ozll,” she responded. After an awkward silence, she said, “You’ve changed.”
He frowned. “How so?”
“You are becoming beautiful.”
He stared, then seemed to dismiss the comment. “We have been coming to meet with you, Inardle.”
“So you said. Why did you want to —”
“You have been changed.”
Inardle stilled. She did not know how to respond, or how Ozll, or any other of the millions of Skraelings present, might feel about her now.
“We need to talk with you,” Ozll said, and Inardle nodded.
“Shall we sit?” she said, folding herself cross-legged to the ground.
Ozll stepped forward, sitting down before her, and the mass of Skraelings swarmed about them, surrounding them completely, before settling to the ground themselves.
“You have been changed,” Ozll said once again. “We want to know what happened. How it felt. What it has done to you. We are curious.”
“First,” Inardle said, “let me show you.” She stood, stretched her arms up above her head, looking skyward . . . from the tips of her fingers and progressively down her body she turned into a beautiful column of green water. She had a basic form of arms, head and body, but the only clear, visible facial features were her eyes. Everything else was . . . liquid, virtually formless.
The Skraelings gasped and hissed, then murmured in a swell of sound as Inardle returned to her Lealfast form and sat once more.
“You are River Angel,” Ozll said, his voice soft.
“When I wish,” Inardle said.
“Tell us how you drowned,” Ozll said. “Did it hurt? Were you scared of the water?”
“I was not killed by water,” Inardle said, “but rather by Axis’ blade when he tore my living heart from my breast.”
The Skraelings had been fascinated by Inardle before this statement. Now they were spellbound.
Inardle explained how she and Axis had been trapped in the ice hex constructed by Eleanon, and how the only way for him to get her out was to murder her, then drag her back to the waters surrounding Elcho Falling.
“He bathed my torn, cold corpse in the lake of Elcho Falling,” she said, “knowing the properties it contained for one with blood such as mine, and from the sky he commanded down an eagle who bore my heart back into my breast. It was .” she paused, remembering, “such power as you cannot imagine. Terrible. Painful. Beyond any words of mine to describe. But, in coming back to life, I was reborn with my River Angel potential awoken within me.”
“So,” Ozll said, “this is not something the mass of Lealfast could do? Jump into the waters of Elcho Falling and . . . transform?”
“No,” said Inardle. “I don’t think so. It was a combination of Axis’ magic and my blood that worked my transformation.”
All the Skraelings relaxed, many smiling, and Inardle realised they’d been worried that the Lealfast, too, might transform into River Angels. “You knew I’d changed,” she said.
“Yes,” Ozll replied. “Thus we came to find you. Inardle, we need to know, what have you become now you are a River Angel?”
Inardle frowned, puzzled. “What do you mean?”
“Inardle,
have you murdered since you were reborn?”
Inardle didn’t know what to say. “Um . . . yes . . . several Lealfast. They attacked myself and Axis, and so I was forced to —”
She stopped, shocked by the look in the Skraelings’ eyes.
They looked sad, almost as if they were disappointed in her, and it was such a strange expression for them to assume that Inardle simply didn’t know what to think.
“You have killed,” Ozll said. “Did you assume the form of a River Angel to kill?”
“Yes,” Inardle whispered.
“Thank you, Inardle,” Ozll said, rising, and bringing to their feet the assembled millions of Skraelings with him. “That was what we needed to know.”
He began to turn, and Inardle called out to him, holding out a hand.
“Wait! Ozll, I — all at Elcho Falling — need to know what you intend to do! Will you —”
“Goodbye, River Angel,” Ozll said, and before Inardle could answer, the congregation of Skraelings vanished, millions upon millions of them, and she was left standing alone in the vast plains of the Outlands, holding out her hand imploringly to a people who no longer wanted to know her.
Chapter 9
Elcho Falling
Elcho Falling was a nightmare to clean up. Everything inside had been water damaged, and close to half of the furniture and bedding had been rendered unusable.
Worse, scores of people had died, drowned or battered to death in the torrents of water that swept down staircases or filled lower chambers.
Among those who had died were the three Enchanters who’d been in the lower basement chamber with the Dark Spire. No one knew if the Dark Spire had killed them, or if they had drowned when the lower chambers had filled with water, but any knowledge they may have had about the cause of the mayhem moving inside had died with them.
Maximilian was furious at the intrusion of the mayhem into Elcho Falling. He knew he shouldn’t be. He knew that neither Isaiah nor Axis could possibly have predicted this, but still he was angry. He knew this was likely a product of his frustration more than anything else, but it didn’t stop him spending a good few long minutes shouting at both Axis and Isaiah before he finally quietened, and apologised.