“Say no more,” he whispered quietly to Khotai, letting his concern show thick in his voice.
The woman squeezed his hand tighter.
The comfort of that grasp overwhelmed Talmadge. Once more, he silently chided himself for not bringing this wonderful companion with him to this place he so dearly loved sooner.
Up above, a light flickered and disappeared.
The wind blew, and carried the unmistakable scream of a man who knew he was about to die.
“Monsters,” Talmadge whispered under his breath, and he glanced around at the folk of the village and reminded himself that they survived because they knew. They knew this land and the dangers it concealed. Their traditions, however much they might seem rooted in superstition, kept these dangers in their thoughts and guided their actions because of those same fables he and Khotai had just mocked.
Talmadge reminded himself to never make light of those tales, any of those tales, even the ones for which he had never seen any evidence, ever again.
* * *
When the sidhe came rushing in, their lack of formation surprised Brayth. He had only battled one small sidhe band in his life—more of an ambush than a real battle—but all of the warriors of Usgar trained for the rare encounters with these wicked goblin creatures. One of the primary lessons for any Usgar warrior was that the sidhe, as dull and primitive as they might be, knew how to fight in formation and with devious tactics.
Thus, Brayth could hardly believe the first wave of sidhe charging up the ridge. Haphazard, with no discernable line, most continued looking back over their shoulders instead of confronting the Usgar warriors who stood to destroy them.
And destroy them the Usgar did! Down the goblins went, one after another, and within heartbeats, the warriors were fighting with each other over who could get the next kill.
Off to the far side, Brayth got none, and he was too surprised to even focus his complaints.
They did not come for us, he heard in his head, an astute observation from Aoleyn, he thought. They are in flight!
Brayth nodded, for as he watched the unfolding massacre with that thought in mind, it all made sense. He knew then that if he wanted to claim some glory this red-tinged night, he would have to actively find some sidhe to kill.
“Stay close to the others,” he instructed Aghmor, who was immediately to his left.
“Where are you going?” Aghmor demanded.
“They are all about. I go to scout the flank,” Brayth answered, and he ran away. His bounding steps took him farther and faster than he intended, each stride covering the ground that would normally take two! It was Aoleyn, he realized, channeling the levitational magic as he went.
So he moved lightly, silently, and with great speed. Just down to the left lay a second ridge, rocky and with a line of short pines atop it. Rounding the top of that line of trees, Brayth found his sidhe, a small group streaming through a bowl-shaped lea of deep grasses just to the side of the battle.
“Be with me,” he whispered aloud, imploring Aoleyn.
In Brayth charged, spear presented. He shot the nearest sidhe down just as it turned, startled, to face him, a bolt of lightning sizzling from his spear tip and throwing the monster aside, where it tumbled to the ground and twitched uncontrollably.
On the Usgar warrior rushed, roaring his battle cry. He sent his spear slashing to the side, taking a sidhe’s club with it, and lighting its scraggly hair with the flames dancing on his weapon’s tip in the same movement. He brought the spear back fast, the monster trying to counter with its club.
The distraction caused by the creature’s burning hair cost the sidhe dearly; its club came in almost half-heartedly against Brayth’s side as he pressed in, as his spear tip burrowed into the monster’s chest.
The weapon tip exploded into flame, and the ugly sidhe squealed and fell dead before Brayth had even extracted his deadly magical weapon. He ran right over the fallen monster, noting the boiling blood bubbling from the hole in its chest.
“Flames!” he growled at Aoleyn, nearing three more of the beasts, who formed a semicircle to entice him in.
And in Brayth went, sweeping his spear right to left, the flames roaring ahead of the weapon, igniting hair and filthy clothing, lighting the branches of the trees that framed the small lea.
Brayth stabbed and roared. Another sidhe fell, stuck through the chest. A second tried to run away, but plowed into a low-hanging bough that was fully engulfed, and so the creature, too, became fully engulfed in biting magical fire as it tumbled down.
The third staggered away, not badly hurt, not burning brightly, but clearly too terrified to confront this mighty Usgar death-dealer.
Brayth started after, but stopped abruptly as he caught the motion of a spinning weapon out of the corner of his eye. He cried out and threw himself to the side, but not fast enough, and the axe buried into his left shoulder, driving him backward.
Pull it out! he heard in his head. Remove it! Quickly!
He reached for the axe, still backpedaling—and a good thing, too: out through the trees came a line of sidhe, advancing in formation.
Brayth tried to keep his sensibilities against the spinning world. He tried to hold his spear in his left hand, his trembling right hand reaching for the embedded axe. He grasped it, grimacing in agony, thinking there was no way he could find the strength to tear it out of his shoulder.
Back! Back! Back! Aoleyn screamed in his mind, and then, as if to accentuate her point, Brayth floated off the ground and was hit with a gust of wind that sent him flying backward, all the way to the tree line back at the top of the rocky ridge.
And in the windy jerk that began the flight, Brayth’s hand came forward, holding the bloody axe!
He looked to his shoulder as he skidded down, saw the blood pouring forth, felt the waves of agony and dizziness, and knew he would collapse onto the ground to be murdered by the advancing sidhe.
* * *
More than the sidhe had noticed Brayth’s glorious exploits. From just northeast of the rocky ridge’s tree line, back and higher up the mountainside, Tay Aillig watched the display of magic with his mouth hanging open.
He knew where Brayth was getting that power—power he could not match because the Usgar-righinn, as agreed, had broken her tie to him after magically assisting him with levitation so that he could quickly form the Usgar line. Mairen did not want to be intimately tied to Tay Aillig any more than he wanted that haggard old witch joining him in spirit or in body.
But now he watched Brayth, watched the pulse of fire light up sidhe and trees alike, watched him fly back to safety to recover, and from a wound that should have ended his fighting this night.
Aoleyn! It was Aoleyn, Elara’s daughter, Brayth’s wife. What glories this man would know with this kind of power joining with him! Glories to outshine Tay Aillig, even.
Tay Aillig clamped his mouth shut, teeth grinding, as he watched the scene in the lea beside the main battle.
* * *
Another was watching, too, though not with physical eyes, and from behind the scrambling sidhe, for it had been the cause of the goblins’ flight this night. The Blood Moon had risen and so the fossa had come forth, and now the song, the interminable, horrid vibration of magic, twanged discordantly at its life energy, insulting it, paining it, demanding a response.
It wasn’t as bad as that night a few weeks before, but the pulse of pain was strong, so strong.
And this time, the fossa was out under the red sky.
This night, the fossa could put an end to it.
* * *
Brayth slumped down, almost to one knee, but before he got there, a wave of healing washed through him. The bleeding stopped, the skin knitted, and the strength in his left arm returned almost immediately.
The young warrior straightened to face the line of sidhe coming toward him, marching in a coordinated and tactical manner.
“Be with me,” he muttered to Aoleyn, and he was not afraid. He would
win here, and would slay a dozen more of these monsters—he would claim more kills this night than the rest of the Usgar warriors combined!
Still, Brayth knew that even with Aoleyn’s help, this was going to be difficult, and he fully expected he’d be feeling the bite of several more brutal wounds before the fight was ended. He could defeat a sidhe one-on-one, but he was woefully outnumbered here!
But then, down to the left, a sidhe squealed and disappeared into the tall grass. Catching it out of the corner of his eye, Brayth couldn’t figure out what had happened. Was it a ruse? A maneuver for the monster to get into the deep grass to conceal its advance? Had a spear hit it?
As Brayth stood there, pondering, the next sidhe went flipping over backward and down into the grass, again screaming, and the third in line cried out and started to run before it, too, disappeared.
Aoleyn? Brayth asked in his thoughts.
She didn’t answer directly, but he understood from her jumbled thoughts that she was as confused as he!
Another sidhe went down.
And Brayth caught the movement across a bare patch of ground, a weasel-like black form, but huge, flashing across the patch, into the grass on the other side; there, another sidhe was brought down, and another went flying.
And Brayth understood!
“The fossa!” he gasped, barely able to breathe.
And the grass began shaking as the creature, low to the ground, streaked for him, like a coming gale. He couldn’t hope to dodge or flee!
But into the air went Brayth, high, and straight up, and then he felt a wind at his back, hurling him forward across the lea.
Up from the grass leaped the fossa, impossibly high, its red eyes burning with inner demonic flames, staring at him hatefully, its opened maw showing gleaming fangs and biting at his feet!
And just missing. The creature landed and sprang right back up, but Brayth was higher now, up in the air beyond its reach.
Aim your spear! he heard in his mind, and he lifted the weapon as if to throw.
No! Just point it! Aoleyn telepathically implored him, and he did, and a blast of lightning erupted from the tip, shooting down at the demon fossa.
The bolt thundered in, shaking the ground, burning the grasses, and when the light diminished enough for Brayth to see, he noted the fossa, seemingly unhurt, and leaping again for him, higher this time.
“Kill it!” he cried to Aoleyn, aiming the spear tip to follow the black creature’s descent.
Another bolt shot forth and struck the creature in midair. But it did not throw the fossa aside, not at all. It seemed instead to simply shoot into the thing, or was absorbed by it. As the fossa set back down, its eyes burned the brighter!
Another burst of wind hit Brayth, launching him along toward the distant trees.
On the ground, the fossa pursued, red eyes locked upon its prey.
* * *
Tay Aillig could barely sort out what he was seeing in the small meadow before him. The sidhe fell, the sidhe fled, and Brayth flew into the air with the fossa snapping wildly at his feet!
It was all too unexpected and crazy.
A lesser man, or perhaps a wiser one, would have fled immediately, run back to the Usgar lines and ordered a fast retreat to the encampment, and the thought did cross Tay Aillig’s mind.
But there the sensible notion bumped against the man’s determination and his anger. He was watching before him, both literally and figuratively, the rise of young Brayth, who, with help from his betrothed, would surely eclipse his glory!
Tay Aillig could not allow that.
The young warrior flew toward the distant tree line, but reversed course and soared back toward the nearer rocky ridge, just down to the left from Tay Aillig. Coming, too, was the fossa, leaping now and then at the warrior, whose spear responded with strokes of ineffective lightning.
Closer they came, the demon focused full on the warrior, on Brayth, who was being held up by Aoleyn through their magical connection.
Tay Aillig was hardly aware of the movement as his hand went to his belt, and was barely conscious of the small and smooth gemstone rolling between his fingers. He felt the power of the sunstone then, and before he could talk himself out of it, before he could really consider the implications, he sent forth the stone’s enchantment, a burst of antimagic.
Flying Brayth became falling Brayth, the man plummeting right into a pine tree, shattering a branch and probably some of his own bones, Tay Aillig thought, given the grunt and wail coming out of there.
What had he done?
For all of his power and brutality, Tay Aillig winced and turned away as the black form of the fossa leaped into the pine at the same point where Brayth had disappeared.
The tree shook, branches shattered, and out the bottom they both fell.
And out from under the tree came the fossa, the demon monster of Fireach Speuer, running up the slope with the broken man hanging from its jaws, much of Brayth dragging along on the ground beside the running monster.
Right for Tay Aillig, it came. He couldn’t dodge, couldn’t flee. How feeble his weapon seemed against the bared power of the demon! He wished then that he had forced Mairen to remain with him in spirit, but even that, he realized, would not be enough.
He braced as the fossa charged in, but he might as well have been trying to stop an avalanche. He was hurled aside by the impact, and rolled desperately, trying to come around and bring his spear into line, for whatever good it might do.
24
THE REALM OF INSUBSTANTIAL
Back in the Usgar camp, Aoleyn’s corporeal form let out a whimper in surprise as her magic failed her, as she felt her malachite and moonstone connection so suddenly severed. She watched the descent through Brayth’s eyes, and cried out again with the branches shattering all about her as the man tumbled through.
She felt Brayth’s pain and tried to focus on the vibrations of the wedstone, to send him healing.
The young woman hesitated. She felt the barrier between her magic and Brayth. Perhaps she could have broken through that barrier, whatever it was, and given him a chance. But Aoleyn remembered what he had done to her, how he had taken her.
She hesitated.
She cried out again, gripped by terror as she saw the horrible demon leaping at her!
No, not at her, she realized, but at Brayth, out there, in the field.
The beast bit in with those murderous jaws.
Aoleyn started to call to the wedstone, thinking that she must heal the man at once. But then she simply screamed again, her thoughts spinning. She felt her life energy fluctuating, splintering; she knew that the fossa had bitten Brayth’s flesh, yes, but somehow, some way, it was also biting at Aoleyn’s very spirit, breaking her apart, sending shards of agony through the flow of energy that sustained her life and magic.
She felt her life force being drawn out of her.
She had an idea, a desperate idea; if she had paused to think about it, the absurdity would have given her pause.
Aoleyn shifted all of her focus to the vibrations of the wedstone.
She felt the fossa’s power stutter, as if the demon was shivering, and Aoleyn knew hope.
But then there came a flash, an intrusion, as if something or someone else had leaped into the battle. And then … blackness. Sudden emptiness.
Aoleyn thought she was dead, thought that she had left the world behind, so suddenly, and was tumbling, anchorless. She could not find her bearings. She was high above the world, and yet she was not in the world. Everything was tinted red, like the moon, Iseabal’s bloody face. And it was so distant!
And she was lost.
Was this death?
* * *
Brayth lay upon the stones unmoving, his body tangled, his guts exposed. Beside him, the demon fossa leaped all about, seeming confused.
More than that, it seemed hurt, truly hurt: its front shoulder where it had collided with Tay Aillig was smoking and bubbling!
It dropp
ed its face to the ground, snuffling, head swiveling all about.
Searching.
Tay Aillig watched the spectacle curiously. Was the creature blind? It had cut down the line of sidhe with devastating efficiency, had tracked the movements of Brayth up in the air unerringly and so completely that it had flown into the tree exactly behind the man.
But now it seemed confused, even nervous, and seemed as if it could not see Tay Aillig, with whom it had just collided. And it was hurt worse than he, much worse! The lightning hadn’t slowed it or even stung it, but the collision with Tay Aillig—no, he realized, the collision with his magic—had clearly hurt the creature.
What did it mean? The man was too shaken to fully sort it out. He wanted to slide farther away, but feared making any noise. He didn’t want to engage this monster. Not now. Not alone.
He clenched his fingers tighter and felt the magic of the small and round gemstone he held in his hand, the sunstone. He felt the tiny sharp flecks of amethyst that were embedded in the stone.
He glanced at it, then back to the fossa. He had been calling upon the magic when the creature had charged at him—no, not at him, but had charged in his direction.
Oblivious to him, perhaps?
He focused and pressed, trying to keep the antimagic in effect now, as though his life depended on it.
The fossa couldn’t locate him.
Tay Aillig was not well versed in the ways of Usgar. He had come upon this curious gem quite unexpectedly years ago and had told none of the witches, nor anyone else, about it. He had learned long ago how to use it to interrupt the magic of the witches, if only briefly.
Now he had learned something else about the curious stone, it seemed, something that might save his life.
Up above him, the fossa clamped its jaws upon Brayth once more and began its run up the side of the mountain, the weight of the near-dead man not even slowing the powerful monster.
Down below, Tay Aillig dared to breathe again. On sudden instinct, he sent a burst of his magic at the fleeing demon.