Chapter 10
The night sky roiled in deep shades of black and purple, heavy clouds blotting out the light of the celestial bodies. But still the wall glowed and flickered with the gyrating shadows of the sentries as the cloud of ember lights grew nearer. Geuel slid his fingers gently along the string of his new bow, feeling the beeswax spread over his fingertips. An arrow hung listlessly on his undrawn string, and six more protruded from a bag of hay before him.
Kezeik stood at the corner of the tower, his face glowing in the light of a nearby brazier. His wrinkled forehead glistened with pooling sweat, and several tendrils wound down past the crows feet near his eyes. He looked very old in that moment, more run down than the ancient hound whose head rested against his thigh.
The approaching cloud was clearer now, a field of single lights rather than a mere glow. Kezeik nodded to Geuel and Toman. “Ready, lads?”
Geuel nodded silently, and Toman grinned.
“Consider this your induction,” Kezeik said with a kindly smile. “As of now you’re both members of the guard.”
He turned back to the wall on their left. “Archers! Ready!” Fifty strings slid back to fifty cheeks, and fifty arms lifted their bows in a ragged salute to death. “Fire!”
The arrows hissed from the wall in a stuttering salvo, a staggered volley spaced over nearly two seconds. They glided upward from the parapet and vanished in the darkness before even reaching their peak.
“Ready! Aim! Fire!”
A second volley, slightly more uniform this time, whipped out into the night. Still the cloud of lights drew nearer, distinct now. Each light formed a slender oval of about six inches, just larger than a fairy. With each volley of arrows, the cloud undulated slightly, individual lights flickering in random directions, giving the impression of a swirling current within the cloud. But the cloud kept coming. Geuel never saw a single light disappear in the four volleys that the archers fired. They simply shifted, flickered, and returned.
Finally, when the front edges of the cloud lay a mere hundred feet out, Kezeik dropped his bow. “Shields!” he called, and the walls rang with the click of falling bows and the dull clatter of wood and leather as men fitted their shields over their vambraced arms.
Geuel squinted at the lights as they approached, striving to narrow his focus to one figure, hoping to see his enemy. They were darker than he expected, glowing only in threaded veins, like the embers of a dying fire. Their bodies were black and choked with the smoke that enveloped them and emanated from within them. Whole portions of their body were formed of smoke, thick wreaths that rippled across their limbs and torsos, disturbing the natural flesh and leaving it still whole in its wake. Their bodies and features were unmistakably goblin when visible but distorted by a smoldering inner light. They seemed exhausted by their own flames, hanging constantly on the verge of final consummation.
They passed over shrieking in a cloud, and in their wake thick billows of ashy smoke rolled across the wall, stinging the eyes of the guards and sending several men into thick coughing fits. Toman coughed twice and clawed at his eyes, trying to clear them and to stay alert. Geuel drew his coat over his nostrils and breathed in shallow drags. As the center of their cloud poised over the wall, the goblins wheeled around and descended. Shields rang and sparks flashed in the night as flaming bodies struck the sentry ranks. Shrieks both human and goblin echoed through the foothills around the city.
A tiny flash of light shot toward Geuel’s chest, and he swung his shield to bat it away. The shape dissipated around the shield’s edge, and Geuel swung right through it, leaving only tendrils of smoke in the wake of his blow. A throaty chuckle rippled from the smoke as it weaved back into its original form. A tiny goblin with ragged crow-like wings flashed from the smoke toward Geuel’s face. He staggered backwards, swinging his sword twice and both times watching the goblin easily slip around its edge.
A column of smoke sprouted in the goblin’s hand and consolidated into a vicious stiletto. It flew forward and thrust. Geuel swung his gloved hand and batted the creature off balance. It flashed downward and buried the stiletto in Geuel’s thigh, instantly dissipating back to smoke. Around the wall, men cried out in shock and fear as their blades carved harmless gaps in wreathes of smoke, as intangible blades formed and cut before their very eyes. Tiny hands sprouting from tendrils of ash grasped and clawed at patches of exposed skin. Tiny arrows of ember embedded into sentries’ eyes.
A cry to Geuel’s right tore his attention away from his own wound as he struggled to tie a bandage into place. Toman was rising into the air, rings of smoke circled tightly around his wrists, his ankles bound by a shadowy, glowing form. His wrists smoked with the heat of pressing coals, and his eyes flashed from side to side in terror. Geuel grabbed him by the leg and struggled to pull him down, slashing carefully at the smoke around his ankle. As his blade hit the smoke, it faded to nothing and Toman’s legs swung free. The bands around his wrists faded off and formed into two goblins in the air nearby. Toman fell heavily to the tower floor, his body jolting on the wooden planks.
Geuel heard then the spit of burning pine, the crackle of sap boiling in flame. The walls around the city burned, lighting the entire courtyard in a freakish network of shifting glows. Lights like embers flashed in clouds and solitary arcs all through the city, spinning into smoke and emerging in fire to strike, shrieking and cackling in voices fully goblin and yet equally something more.
Geuel and Toman stood nearly back to back in the tower’s center, separated only by the stout flagpole of the Iris, batting with their shields at the tendrils of smoke that swerved toward them like the tentacles of some central beast. Nearly every time the smoke merely dissipated, but once Geuel was rewarded by the meaty thud of flesh against his shield and the weight of a body ricocheting back into the shadows. Kezeik was nowhere to be seen, having moved down to the nearby wall where the fighting was heaviest. Geuel could still hear his voice shouting orders from the fray, orders not meant to be heeded but merely shouted to remind those fighting that command still reigned in the battle.
Geuel heard a sharp cry behind him followed by the fade of a departing cackle. “Took one in the shoulder,” Toman said, “don’t know how much longer I can keep this up.”
Geuel swung his shield hard and felt the reverberations rattle his arm as it swept through a cloud of smoke and struck the tower wall. “We can’t leave,” he said. “We have to hold the standard.”
Toman grunted as he swung at a passing streak. “I’m not dying for a shred of silk. Let’s get to the others.”
He staggered toward the stairs leading to the courtyard, and Geuel circled the flagpole uneasily, struggling not to leave his back exposed. He glanced at the wall over the gate. It was deserted now, nearly engulfed in flames and littered with the bodies of its guards. Around the city, the other walls were mostly bare. Groups of two or three stood here and there along their expanse, back to back as Geuel and Toman had been. The remaining soldiers were in the courtyard, milling in tight groups behind their shields. Several soldiers had shed their weapons and were throwing water on the walls of the burning granary. Unarmed, they didn’t last long.
A sharp, sudden pain filled Geuel’s left side as he felt a burning dagger enter below his lowest rib. He collapsed to his knees and swung his sword behind him, feeling his hand pass through a cloud of fading smoke.
Screams came from above as well as below now. As the goblins adjusted to their new form, they discovered various advantages to flight. Soldiers caught alone were dragged high into the air over Gath Odrenoch and dropped back on their own comrades like trebuchet shot.
Geuel staggered to his feet and swung at a passing tendril of smoke as it moved toward the outer wall. He felt his shield strike something solid and a spatter of blood sprayed his face. He closed his eyes to shield them from the spray, and when he opened them again he faced over the outer wall toward the south. The trees glowed with a new light in the distance, a bright shimmer of sunlight. It was surely too early for dawn, but still that golden light glistened on the emerald trees. And then he saw them. A cloud of new lights, purer and cleaner than the lights of the goblins. Lights as fresh as daybreak.
Geuel turned back from the wall and looked over the town. The whole of its southern sector was ablaze now. Flames licked at the stairs of the very tower where he stood. The hospital still lay several streets out of reach of the flames, but even the youngest child huddled beneath the beds of the wounded could feel its city falling. Many of the women and children, some younger than twelve, had poured out into the main courtyard. In their hands were a variety of weapons: cleavers and mallets and clubs fashioned from chair legs. And still the goblins swirled and writhed through the streets in columns of smoke, seeking out the weaker targets, the small and the isolated.
A flash of smoke shot upward to Geuel’s tower, and he prepared to swing his shield; but the goblin ignored Geuel and landed on top of the pole, using its hands to burn through the ropes holding the flag. Geuel tore off his shield and hurled it like a discus, splitting the creature in half where it crouched. He watched his shield strike the earth of the courtyard and drew out his sword and dagger. He knew the end was coming.
* * *
The minotaur’s eyes rolled in its skull as it drew in a deep breath through its crusted nostrils. Its body quivered with anticipation at Reheuel's scent, but it remained still. Clutching his dagger in his hand, Reheuel took a few steps forward. The creature’s eyes slid after him, reddened with burst blood vessels. Its scarred chest heaved with its ragged breathing, but it remained still. Reheuel approached until he stood beside the altar, and still the beast hung back, just watching. That was when Reheuel noticed the collar, a heavy iron ring bolted around its neck. A thick chain ran out through a slit in the wall to an adjoining room. Reheuel lifted the Tear and began backing up. Just then he heard the sound of a slamming bolt from the door behind him.
A howl of laughter broke from the next room, and the chain on the minotaur’s neck slackened. It took a tentative step forward.
“Reheuel,” Ariel said, tensing and sliding her tiny dagger from its sheath.
“I know,” he replied.
Then it was charging. It lowered its head like a true bull and shot forward, snorting in animal rage. Reheuel dove to the side and listened to the shuddering crunch as the beast’s skull struck the wall. A few shards of rock fell onto his cerulean cloak as he struggled to stand back up. The creature wheeled on him, its eyes wide now with adrenaline. It lifted the chain that hung from its neck and began to twirl it over its head. Reheuel moved toward the center of the room, struggling to stay out of the range of its weighted flail.
Ariel circled it above, flashing and shifting the intensity of her light to distract it, to give Reheuel some chance of attack.
Reheuel circled the altar in the center of the room, keeping it between himself and the swirling chain. As he moved, his thoughts ran in circles, struggling to comprehend what he was seeing. The minotaurs were gone, finished. An ancient story to tell rebellious children.
He ducked as the chain lashed out over his head.
A story that could take your head off.
He glanced to the creature’s chain and collar, to the sores that covered its body. It was clearly some kind of slave, perhaps barely sentient, some straggling descendant of a domesticated breed. He almost felt saddened, seeing a member of such an ancient race reduced to the state of an animal.
The chain shot out once more, low this time, and struck the base of the altar. It wrapped twice and lodged there. As the minotaur dragged at it, Reheuel ran its length and slashed at the back of the minotaur’s leg, hoping to sever a tendon. The blade went high and merely nipped the muscles of its thigh. It bellowed and swung out its arm, catching his shoulder and sending him flying against the wall. He slumped to the ground, and the Tear tumbled from his hand.
Ariel flew to his shoulder and struggled to drag him upright. “We have to get out,” she said breathlessly. “It’s too strong.”
He shook himself to clear his head and stop the world from spinning. “Get a door open,” he said, “I’ll keep it busy.”
He ran toward the minotaur again on its other side and slashed for its leg. This time it kicked backwards and sent its hoof past his face, barely missing him as he rolled to the side and circled back in front.
Ariel flew to the door where the minotaur had been chained and found a large keyhole below its cast-iron knob. She slid her arm inside and slowly filled the keyhole with her solid light, gently levering the tumblers into position. The lock gave with a rusty click, and she pulled back from the door.
Just then a sound like brittle thunder exploded behind her. She spun to see the altar torn off its base. The chain of the minotaur shot away from it, and the creature turned again on Reheuel, ignoring the chain this time and advancing with its meaty hands opened wide. Reheuel backed up against the far door and waited for a chance to strike.
Ariel saw the distance close. Ten feet, five. Then she shot forward and extended her arm. A shield of pure light materialized in Reheuel’s hand, and he lifted it in front of him, catching the first of a salvo of blows. The minotaur’s fists bloodied and tore on the shield as it beat madly, and Reheuel edged out into the open.
Reheuel thrust out once with his dagger, but the tiny blade barely did more than nick the beast’s hand and anger it further. Ariel floated near the ceiling and held out her arm stiffly, trembling with the exertion, her body rebelling at the abuse of its power. She could feel her link to Innocence fading as she maintained an instrument of warfare.
Reheuel held his own now, backing up constantly under the barrage of blows but blocking successfully and occasionally lashing out with his shield. But he was tiring. His movements were reserved and careful. Soon he would weaken. Ariel lifted her other arm and clenched her fists, drawing out a sword blade of light from his small dagger. She screamed in pain as she felt her ties to Innocence splinter. Barely a thread still held Ariel to her power.
Reheuel lashed out with the sword and caught the minotaur on the arm. It bellowed and ran forward, striking his shield and bowling him over onto his back. The shield shattered and faded to dust as Ariel lost her hold on it. Reheuel drew the sword to his chest and held it up as the minotaur collapsed on top of him, its massive hands closing on his head.
The web of meat beneath its thumbs covered his eyes, but he still felt the slide of his blade as it penetrated the beast’s chest. Its fingers loosened from his head, and he felt its three hundred pound body slide to the floor. Reheuel went to pull the sword from its chest but found only his dagger, buried in an oversized wound.
Ariel knelt on the floor nearby, her light flickering dim and weak, her eyes glassy. The shock of gray in her hair, almost gone since the day before, had come back fully now. She looked old. Reheuel lifted her and the Tear from the floor and placed them both in his pack. Then he went to the unlocked door and slid it open. A goblin, seeing him come out and the dead beast behind him, shrieked in terror and scurried away down the stairs. Reheuel followed, muscles tensed and his dagger clutched at the ready.
* * *
Geuel swung his sword, felt the rush of air as it harmlessly carved through a swath of smoke, and then crumpled as a blade pierced his stomach. He dropped his dagger and groped at the area in front of his wound; but the goblin had already dissipated. He saw two more rising toward the tower and lifted his sword. As he prepared to swing, his shadow in front of him suddenly sharpened and a blast of light flooded the courtyard below. The air rushed around him, and he felt the rustle of silk clothing brush his hair as hundreds of tiny bodies flooded over the wall of the city. Bright, silvery voices rang in high-pitched war cries, inflected with a savagery wholly alien to their beauty.
The two goblins turned to flee and were impaled with a volley of tiny gleaming javelins. The javelins faded away as the goblins plummeted to earth, the embers in their bodies turning to ash. Geuel laughed out loud as the fairies rushed past him, score upon score. Their gleaming little figures burned with excitement and lit the whole courtyard with the light of day.
The goblins shot upward to meet their new enemies in the air, striving to escape the reach of human weapons. The fairies followed, lights striking lights in the air, twinkling and fading and then gleaming like gnomish fireworks. The smoke offered no protection against the fairy weapons, and the goblins reeled at first beneath their onslaught. Ember-filled bodies rained from the sky to spatter on the cobblestones and roofs of Gath Odrenoch.
After the goblins had recovered their bearings though, they quickly turned the tide. Geuel watched as the lights of both armies scattered across the sky in spirals supernaturally fast and tight. Tiny javelins flickered like lightning bolts from the hands of the fairies. But the goblins dodged and wreathed around those flickered lights. And whenever an ember glow neared a circle of sunlight, the sunlight faded and fell.
The battle looked like two colliding meteor showers, dozens of arcing lights intermingling until two struck and one dissolved. Tiny bodies peppered the earth like raindrops in a slow drizzle. Gradually, the fairies began to weaken, and many flew down to the level of the city, trying to draw their enemies in close to the human soldiers. The last light Geuel saw lower was a blazing green one, brighter than all the rest.
As the fairies lowered, the men opened their ranks to shield them, giving them momentary respite from the battle. The goblins remained poised in the sky, flickering up and down with indecision. Geuel watched the green light approach his tower and smiled to see Randiriel. “You came!” he cried.
Randiriel landed on the wall of the tower and finished tying a bandage around her bleeding arm. “So this is the Iris on sky-blue silk,” she said, nodding to the standard.
“More beautiful for her scars,” Geuel replied, glancing momentarily at the charred cloth above them, shot through with burns and tears.
“Then let us bleed for her,” Randiriel said, clenching her fist and forming a silver sword.
The goblins descended.
Geuel dropped his sword and tore the small brazier from its mooring, wielding it like a flaming club. Randiriel flew behind him, and they braced themselves for the battle. She felt the air stir from the rippling standard above her, and she thought of all the men who must have stood beneath this very symbol, struggling for their survival. She thought of men weary and hungry stooped beneath it in camps of defeat, of victors proudly unfurling it from the flagpoles of cities newly won. She thought of it hanging over the seats of judges and kings, its presence an eternal reminder that law reigned over men. She felt the blood running from her arm, and she felt a part of something greater than herself, of a tradition and a heritage.
A blade raced toward her, extended from a cloud of smoke, and she knocked it aside with her sword. A goblin shrieked in the smoke and veered off to the left. She lifted her sword like a javelin, and as she lifted it, it molded into one. She cast it and watched a goblin spiral out of the air, pierced through the chest. A new sword formed in her hand.
Three goblins came flying at Geuel, their ember bodies gleaming intensely from within their clouds of smoke. He swung his brazier wide and felt it lighten as its coals flung out into the air. One goblin flopped to the ground, struck by a burning coal, and Randiriel flashed down to finish it off. The other two dissipated and flowed past Geuel, forming again behind him.
He spun around in time to receive two spears buried in his chest. He felt the spearheads broadening slowly beneath his skin, widening the small wounds and burrowing deeper into his chest. He tore one out with his right hand and grasped at the spear’s owner, feeling only smoke writhe away between his fingers. He sank to his knees as the other spear still grew, as large as a true dagger now. A flash of green streaked in front of him and Randiriel slammed into the remaining goblin, burying her sword to its hilt.
Geuel gasped as the spear inside his chest changed to smoke and blood flowed onto his cloak. He rolled backward onto the floor of the tower and turned a hazy gaze to the sky. Above him the Iris still waved in the glow of the burning buildings. Smoke billowed from the walls, drifting north over the city. Randiriel hovered beside the flagpole, parrying the thrust of a goblin.
Blackness robbed Geuel of any further sight.
* * *
Skittering claws echoed in the keep of the goblin city. Reheuel’s heavy boots crunched on the edges of the tiny stairs as he hurried down toward the streets. Occasionally he heard the growling yips of goblins behind the doors he passed, but he barely slowed, knowing that escape was his best chance for survival.
Many times in his descent, he nearly fell, his boots snapping off a corner of a stair or slipping on a patch of worn stone; but he kept his balance and, after an eternity of dreamlike circling down the winding stairs, he reached the street. He ran quickly down the alleys he had come by, splashing through the tiny rivulets of water that ran toward the nearby river. Several arrows spat shards of stone about his ankles as they skipped off the cobbled streets, and the sound of twanging bowstrings echoed from the heights of the sealed city. Reheuel tried to ignore the sounds and kept running, his heart thumping wildly in his chest and his lungs swelling to refresh his failing muscles.
By the time he reached the river, he had lost track of his pursuers. He entered the shallow water at a run and tumbled into his canoe, tossing his backpack into the prow. A sharp cry sounded from inside as it rolled into place. He lifted his punting pole and slammed it down into the water, sending the craft downriver in a rapid but awkward glide. An arrow buried itself in the side of the canoe, and he continued punting, his eyes fixed on a distant exit in the wall of the city-cavern.
Twice more as he rode, arrows sang past him; but they clattered harmlessly off far-off walls, wild shots taken from a distance. As he neared the exit, his backpack opened and Ariel crept out, her light still dim but with a quality more perfect and pure than Reheuel had seen since the Tear was first taken. The Tear within the bag glowed with an equal perfection, sending out tiny flashes of sunlight through the wrinkles of the backpack’s opening.
Just then Reheuel saw shapes slithering across the shadows of a building near the exit. Two goblins were creeping into position on top of the roof. Almost immediately after noting them, he saw others, dozens of them, crouching in the alleys and windows around the exit. They were cutting him off.
Ariel slid the Tear from the bag, clutching it in both hands, and lifted it over her head, dwarfed by its translucent orb. It brightened slowly at first, seeming to swell and bulge as the light in its droplet center seeped out to fill the crystal shell. Then the light broke the surface of the gem and flared outward like the rays of a tiny sun, blasting the walls and buildings in a deep and heavy glow. Reheuel covered his eyes and turned away, blinded. Even as he did so, he could feel the light intensifying, singing his clothing and burrowing through his eyelids.
The goblins shrieked, and bowstrings twanged wildly as the creatures scrabbled away from the blaze, their nocturnal eyes scarred and overloaded. The canoe passed into the cave exit unchallenged, and Ariel lowered the gem, letting its glow fade to the light of a summer day.
They drifted peacefully through the narrow tunnel, unchallenged and bathed in daylight. Reheuel uncovered his eyes and wiped away a few involuntary tears, his vision still hazy. “We made it,” he said with a relieved chuckle. “They won’t follow us in the light.”
“You have done well,” Ariel said. “You have my thanks.”
“So, what now?” he asked, “will you rebuild the city?”
“If any remain to dwell there. You saw the lights bound for Gath Odrenoch.”
“We’ll know when we get there.”
They were both silent for a while, and then Ariel pointed to the carvings that covered the cave walls. “This city is old,” she said, “older than the goblins and the Iris. Perhaps older than the City of Youth. No goblin carved these walls.”
Reheuel nodded. “Minotaurs most likely. Been centuries since man had any dealings with the brutes. No telling how long that one has been chained down here.”
Ariel stood on the edge of the canoe and ran her fingers over a carving of a river nymph as they passed. “They were a noble people,” she said. “Their lives were counted in centuries rather than decades, and the world was a marvelous place under their rule, full of splendors forgotten by song. Their temples stood on pillars of diamond wood with minarets of steel and altars carved from living stone.”
“You were there with the minotaurs?” Reheuel asked, forgetting, as he often did, just how old his companion truly was.
She nodded. “From their rise to their fall. They had a dream while they ruled. They called it Elkinaugh: an eternal kingdom passed down through their lineage, to last till the sun burnt out and Time unfurled the final second of its strand. But here they are, slobbering beasts chained in the caves of an inferior race. They, whose cities were the wonders of the world.”
“No wonder lasts forever,” Reheuel said softly, driving his pole deep into the murk beneath their craft.
“I thought my city would last for eternity,” Ariel said. “But why should it last when Elkinaugh fades? Why should I cling to youth’s innocence if it is only going to shatter?”
“Perhaps because passing beauties still bless passing lives,” Reheuel replied.
The light reflecting from the carvings dimmed then as the walls ahead of the canoe gave way to the great cavern through which they had entered the goblin city. Reheuel dropped the pole into the water and lifted his dagger.
Ariel grasped the tear, and it slowly brightened, the circle of its light racing across the cavern floor to meet the flow of sunlight filtering over the outer gates. The cavern was empty aside from the small flotilla of canoes still bumping against the bridge. Reheuel sheathed his dagger, leapt ashore, and ran for the nearest stair, letting himself out over the rough wooden wall.
It was a warm morning outside, muggy with the mist of the previous day’s downpour; but the fresh air still provided a welcome change from the stale cold of the caves. He felt each breath fill his body with new strength as he strode from the gates. It would take him two more days to reach Gath Odrenoch, but as he felt then, the prospect seemed a mere stroll.