The Arcana: Shadow Wars, Codex I

XII

Red Rock, Blue Fire

In which the battle begins

Lady Aelia stood in the doorway to her room, speaking in hushed tones to three of her guardsmen. Though Edana quietly opened her door, Lady Aelia looked up sharply at them, confirming Bessa’s suspicion that she had superhuman hearing. In the gloom of night her eyes glowed brightly as she stared at them.

Bessa and Edana hurried over to her, and her guards parted to allow them access.

“We’re in danger, aren’t we?” Edana demanded.

Bathed in moonlight, Lady Aelia looked decidedly inhuman as she narrowed her eyes at them. Bessa forced herself to remember not to interpret inhuman as evil; that humans were not the only people. She reminded herself Lady Aelia was on their side.

Lady Aelia stepped out of her room, joining them in the courtyard. At a nod from her, one of her guards immediately set off, presumably to carry out whatever orders she had given him.

“Walk with me,” she said. Pivoting on her heel, she headed for the double doors of the back entrance of Roswald’s home. They stepped outside, onto the gravel street of the senior officers’ quarters.

“You are correct,” she said, when they rounded the corner on the path now to the headquarters.

Bessa swallowed. “The giants?”

“Yes.”

An entire town lay on Red Pointe’s doorstep. Rapidly, Bessa calculated how quickly they could be roused. Would it matter if Duke Gagnon knew of it? Would he attempt to thwart any effort to save them? Or were the civilians simply game pieces to him?

“What of the townspeople?” Bessa asked, moving forward again. “Can we get them inside the fortress in time?”

“My men have already gone to alert the civilians to come into the fortress. Do not fear for them.”

The eerie calm in her voice reminded Bessa of how Edana behaved the night when the giants attacked the vineyard. Maybe she ought to interpret the calm as supreme confidence, but Bessa couldn’t bring herself to do so. Images of her workers flashed before her. Had she just engineered a similar fate on the civilians of Red Pointe?

Bessa clenched her jaw, hit at once with the realization that she hadn’t given sufficient thought to what the duke would do if cornered. She had planned around Roswald’s potential assistance; she had not expected a Saavedra or a Lady Aelia. Nor did she consider that any of the three must maneuver on uncertain ground: Edana was right, who were the duke’s allies? Ignorance of the answer may have checked their response.

Always get the lay of the land, Uncle Min’da had once advised. Now she saw what he meant.

Lady Aelia held up a hand, silently quelling the question Bessa started to ask. “You are not dressed for battle, Optima Nuriel,” Lady Aelia observed, although she stared straight ahead and did not look at Edana.

“I can change if it will make a difference, my lady. We are at your service.” Edana glanced up at her, but Lady Aelia betrayed no emotion.

“There’s no time,” Lady Aelia said softly.

Again she exuded a preternatural calm. Could Lady Aelia foresee her own death? Officially, scryers didn’t see the future, only the present. Still, Bessa suspected the scryer would know if her own end had arrived, and if Edana were right, then that time may have come.

And possibly not only for her.

“Is there anything we can do?” Bessa demanded. “He’s not getting away with this. He’s not going to get all those people killed and go his merry way. If you know something we can do to stop him, tell us.” Belatedly she cut herself off, remembering suddenly that Lady Aelia was not obliged to take orders from her.

“He?”

Bessa stopped in her tracks, forcing Lady Aelia to stop and turn back as well. With her hands on her hips, she met the seer’s gaze without heat. Or fear.

“Let’s not pretend,” Bessa said. “You may be a servant of the empire, but the duke is not.”

Lady Aelia nodded slowly, and stared at Bessa as if seeing her for the first time. “Well played, Elisabet Bessa Philomelos. I took you for a mere victim. So you did not stir up Silura out of simple grievance? This is part of a plan?”

“Your questions are not reassuring. I am Siluran, and in the old days I could have fielded an army, summoned allies, and put the duke’s head on a stake where it belongs. But now only Rasena Valentian soldiers have that authority, so all I can do is make sure that he has no easy time making prey of my people. I have stirred them up: their eyes are on you.”

She let that last part hang there, and watched the wheels turn in Lady Aelia’s eyes. Tamping down the bite in her voice she added, “I believe that you are here to trap or thwart Gagnon. If so, our interests are aligned, so long as the result is that Silura will be properly defended. If I have you right, then let us get on with it. If not, then let us part.”

Lady Aelia drew herself up to the full six feet of her height. “Fair enough, Optima. Roswald has also sent a squad to call in the villagers. I wager we have far less than an hour before the giants arrive. The armory is in the courtyard of the headquarters. I suggest you get what you need, then join me in the tower.”

Getting into the armory wasn’t a problem, quickly selecting the appropriate armor was. Fortunately, some of the battle sorcerers and priests were women. Edana selected mail shirts for her and Bessa to wear over a subarmalis.

Next came leather trousers. Off went their slippers, and on went sturdy boots. Edana tied her shawl about her waist like a sash, partially concealing the Huntress blades she’d strapped to her thighs.

The weapons were the next problem. Edana’s knives were for a last resort; neither she nor Bessa wished to get close enough to use them on the giants. A quick investigation revealed a cache of arrows and javelins tipped with moonbow steel, and they claimed those for themselves.

Armed with a bow and javelins, Bessa armored her wrists with leather bracers. In her childhood, Uncle Linos took her and Edana and their friends on deer hunts. Hunting was his idea of fulfilling the athletic part of their education. Between his training and the legion’s moonbow steel, Bessa hoped her hits would count.

Felling even one giant would honor her uncle … but Grandfather Pendry would disapprove of her joining forces with Rasena Valentian soldiers. Aurelia’s influence, he’d scoff. Then again, at least Bessa was using their ancestral weapons.

“All set, Edana. You have the thunder mace?”

“Yes. Let’s go.”

“The duke fled into the tunnels,” Lady Aelia reported when they rejoined her.

A young woman stood at her side. Though clad similarly to Bessa and Edana, her sunstone Oathtaker brooch distinguished her as a sorceress. She briskly introduced herself as Verena Roswald, the former pegasus prime, and Roswald’s wife.

“The tunnels lead into the hills. On the other side is the coast. If he means to escape that way we can meet him there,” Verena said.

Lady Aelia smiled. “My mounts.”

Bessa’s heart pounded. She had imagined them occupying the high points of the fortress, raining missiles upon the duke. Dealing with him from an undefended position, even if it was from a dragon’s vantage point, never crossed her mind.

While Uncle Linos did teach them to shoot from horseback, Bessa hadn’t practiced mounted shooting since she was ten or so. If she lived, she must tell Pippa to include wing fighting in her studies at the Rhabdo.

In the courtyard they met Saavedra’s troops, who were headed for the tunnel entrance. Verena quickly briefed them.

“I will trap him from the other side,” Lady Aelia said. “Don’t kill him when you catch up to him, hold him only. I will not allow him to escape.”

Roswald’s forces had already mustered. How much time did they have left?

Lady Aelia’s drakes would not tolerate any but their masters to ride them. Verena claimed a silver-winged horse, her former battle mount, and assigned gryphons to Bessa and Edana, who were assisted by two of Lady Aelia’s beast masters.

Remembering Aunt Sorcha, Bessa approached the beast with trepidation. She glanced at Edana, who eyed the creature coldly, but didn’t hesitate in mounting it. Well, if she could do it…

It’s like a horse. With claws, she told herself as she contemplated the creature, with its white hair on its lion half and silver feathers on its eagle side. The gryphon tracked her movements, at first motionlessly, until it was forced to turn its head when she reached its back. The beast master assigned to her uttered strange words in a soothing tone. For a moment the gryphon glared at her, then turned away to face the front. Lifting her gently, the beastmaster set Bessa on the gryphon’s back.

As one Lady Aelia, Verena, and the beast masters shouted a command, and with a running leap their mounts took off.

At breakneck speed they hurtled away from the ground, ascending higher than the tower until the figures rushing to and fro on the ground looked like dolls. So exhilarated was she that Bessa forgot to be afraid.

Lady Aelia led them over the rocky hills that separated the fort from the northern shoreline. When they cleared the hills, Bessa’s heart leapt into her mouth.

Below them, as far as the eye could see, giants marched on the beach, heading straight for the cave.

Scanning the landscape, a chill went through Bessa when she noted the absence of ships. Nor did she see a camp for that matter; the giants clearly hadn’t been stationed there. Before she could ask about reinforcements, Lady Aelia’s voice rang out.

“Look away,” Lady Aelia shouted, an eyeblink before she flung out her arm.

Light glimmered along the seer’s bare right arm, which was all Bessa saw before she shut her eyes. The air warmed for a brief moment, and a roar filled her ears. When Lady Aelia shouted for them to move, Bessa’s gryphon had already changed position.

The humans opened their eyes to see a wall of blue fire cutting off the giants from the mouth of the cave. The duke was not among them, which meant he was trapped on the other side, as Lady Aelia intended.

Verena’s hands also moved, a dim filament of light emerging from them. Down below, the sand began to glow. Again Lady Aelia rained fire, turning the sand into a small lake of fire.

The giants roared, and the winged beasts screamed in rage. Bessa’s stomach dropped as her gryphon undulated, diving deep enough that she saw the pattern of the giants’ armor before the gryphon swooped up out of range—she hoped—of the lightning weapons.

On her ascent she passed Edana’s swooping gryphon, but Edana proved to be prepared: once low enough, she discharged the thunder mace. The sands turned to glass when the lightning struck it.

Verena slashed the air with her left hand, and suddenly, the tide rolled from the beach—

—And came back almost as quickly, but much further inland than it had been before. Rolling over the giants and molten sands, the water sent up steam that became gusts of wind as Verena circled overhead on her winged steed, her arms spread.

At her shout the wind became a small cyclone, sending glittering fragments of glass swirling up and pelting the giants. If they had eyes, they would be blinded.

The giants, already writhing and screaming thanks to the fiery sands, now let out one long, deafening roar before their armor collapsed in charred ruins.

In her mind, Bessa heard Uncle Linos’s instructions as she readied her javelin. Wisely she held back; the giants dismayed her in their failure to fall right away. A human would have fallen as soon as Lady Aelia’s flames had turned the sands molten; the giants had lasted too long.

Soon every giant fell, their armor littering the beach.

Yet the women and the beast masters didn’t cheer. The beach quieted, but they didn’t sense that peace had come.

Mist began to rise from the giants’ remains. In the sky above, Edana swore. The group drew near to each other, until Edana could speak without shouting herself hoarse.

“They’re regenerating. The soldiers at Falcon’s Hollow said you definitely need Salamandran acid to stop them,” Edana said, glancing at Lady Aelia. “Otherwise, you have to take their heads.”

Lady Aelia inhaled sharply. “Atta’u. I knew it.” Her gaze fastened on the javelin in Bessa’s hand. “Let me see that,” she said, and Bessa handed it to her.

They watched as Lady Aelia gripped the point and the first few feet of the javelin, vigorously running her hands nearly a quarter of its length, leaving a glistening trail in the wake of her movements.

In the light of the half-moon the weapon shone with the acid she had coated it with. With a shout she hurled it at one of the shapes forming on the beach, dissolving it before it coalesced. They paused long enough to confirm the kill before Lady Aelia seized the rest of the javelins Bessa carried. She coated them as fast as she could before handing them back to Bessa, who gingerly grasped them by their dry ends.

Without waiting, Bessa ordered her beast master to have their gryphon circle over the giants. Never did she allow herself longer than a heartbeat to aim before she fired upon her targets, shapes that formed far faster than she would let herself acknowledge in her terror.

Soon Edana’s arrows joined Bessa’s javelins, and together their missiles secured their victory over the strange beings. Bessa took the opportunity to pluck a thunder mace for herself from atop the pile of armor. Verena followed suit, and the women made a point of retrieving as many of the javelins and arrows as possible.

Lady Aelia; however, already moved on, aiming her gryphon for the cave. Sapphire flames still gated the mouth. Eying the flames, Bessa wondered if the color signaled the intensity of the heat. Even from a good eighty feet away the fire warmed her, and her gryphon balked at moving closer.

As soon as her fire drake flew low enough, Lady Aelia leapt from its back, allowing it to ascend again and circle overhead. She; however, strode to the mouth of the cave. Without hesitation she passed through her own fire, placing herself out of their reach.

“We’re not to follow?” Edana asked, glancing at Verena, who had reined her own mount beside her.

“We’re not to follow,” Verena said. “Our job is done here, ladies. Let’s move out.”

Verena forced them to halt as they drew near the fortress. The beast masters reined in Bessa and Edana’s gryphons closer to her. She faced them with a grim expression.

“The giants we fought on the beach were only a handful. Lady Aelia told me the mass she saw approaching would likely swamp the fortress, and breach the gates.”

“And we don’t have her fire or her acid,” Edana pointed out.

“There’s that. By now all of the civilians should be in the tower. Normally I’d send you both there, but you have gryphons, good aim, and the will to fight.”

With a nod, the women accepted her implied request.

Still, one question nagged at Bessa. “Did Lady Aelia say where the giants were coming from? The ones on the beach were just there. Also, what of their sorcerers? There weren’t any on the beach, but Pegasus Prime Senovara definitely says she faced one in my home.”

“A point of origin? Worth looking into, but—”

Boom!

Enraged, the battle mounts screamed. The women joined them when their battle mounts began to plummet. Only a frantic barrage of syllables from the beast masters brought their steeds under control.

“What was that?” Edana asked, when her own gryphon subsided.

In the moonlight Verena looked deathly pale. She cast an ominous eye in the direction of the fortress.

“To the tower,” she said at last. “Let’s go.”

As they drew near, Bessa squinted. Where were the walls?

Oh.

Giants swarmed the courtyard, bursting through the barracks block. No resistance met them as they sped for the headquarters. How had they breached the walls?

At last she spotted the crumpled watch towers, ripped from the jagged remains of the red sandstone walls they were once attached to.

Stone. The giants destroyed stone walls.

Verena cried out, “The tower!”

Chunks of stones were missing from the headquarters, as the top deck had either caved in, or fallen onto the bodies below the tower. Likely the dead were once the archers or sorcerers who had occupied the high positions.

“What now?” Edana asked, the color draining from her face.

“Pegasus Prime Roswald,” someone shouted, and they turned as one to see a small pack of gryphons bearing down on them, led by a bearded man on a red-winged gryphon. He saluted Verena.

“Red Gryphon Ekkehard. How many are left of the wingmen?” Verena demanded.

“Not even a quarter,” he answered. “The ones with me are it. The others fell from the sky after that ungodly noise the giants made. They had some sort of weapon that shook the ground, and destroyed the walls. Pegasus, everyone is in the tower. Last I saw of the aether, he went for his dragon. I—”

“Look!” Edana pointed to the door of the tower.

Giants massed there, applying their thunder maces to the huge metal doors that barred their way. The doors shimmered silver, indicating a protection spell. The doors continued to hold, but for how long?

They turned to Verena Roswald.

“The giants outnumber us,” Ekkehard said.

“So did the ones on the beach,” Edana pointed out, directing herself to Verena. “They’re all here in one place. Don’t you have a way to kill them all at once?”

Verena’s eyes roved the landscape. She glared at the remains of the wall, and the guard towers. Then she smiled wolfishly, and called out to the two remaining sorcerers in the wing division. When they came forward she said,

“The giants knocked down our walls. Let them know now what it will cost them. Give me wind.”

Ekkehard ordered the others to ascend, so they would be clear of Verena and the other two sorcerers. Side by side, Bessa and Edana watched in fascination as green filaments grew from their hands, then arced between them as the sorcerers spread their arms. The three of them took positions, Verena over what was left of the gates, the other two at opposite ends of the courtyard where the giants massed.

From her vantage height, the giants looked like toy soldiers, and Bessa leaned forward on her gryphon to watch as Verena began to exact her vengeance.

Wind turned to gales, carrying the chunks and rubble of the walls to the giants, pelting them, gashing them, crushing them.

The sorcerers were relentless, not stopping until every giant had fallen. Only then did they regroup with Ekkehard, to await the regeneration. Before anyone could speak, a piercing scream shook them all.

A dragon bore down on them.

Bessa’s mouth opened, but no sound came out. She would have fallen from her gryphon but for the beast master, who held her tight. Dimly through her terror, she noticed the lack of reaction of the beasts, and wondered why. Only Verena’s shout of triumph calmed her, and allowed her to remember the draco part of Draco Aether Roswald’s title.

The red dragon blocked out what little there was of the moon, putting them all in utter darkness. All of them had to spread out, to give room to the dragon and its outstretched wings. Drawing level with them was a matter of perspective; the dragon’s head was large enough to swallow whole any wingman, gryphon and rider both. Its golden eyes were about the size of a human head, and its teeth invited shudders.

The dragon turned slightly, revealing the aether astride her on a harness of gold mail.

“Well done,” Roswald commended. “I had thought only Roswitha could destroy them so thoroughly.” He smiled at Bessa and Edana. “Ladies, we are eager to test out your advice to behead the giants. Stay here; you have done your part. The rest of us will deal with this.”

With that, the others moved out, the aether in the lead.

They hadn’t gone far when a column of thick smoke whirled up from the center of the courtyard. The smoke behaved oddly, swirling about as if around an axis, yet forming almost a starburst pattern as six arms radiated out at regular intervals, then disappeared into the core. The smoke rose higher than the tower of the headquarters, and only then did they realize that it wasn’t smoke at all.

A shape began to coalesce.

In swatches they could see bone and sinew appearing as the smoke formed itself into one massive giant.

“By the Reaper,” Bessa breathed.

Before they knew it, the smoke cleared. Standing alongside the tower was a strange being with the head of a lion, the body of a man, the wings of a bat, and six serrated arms terminating in dragon claws.