Dynan grabbed hold of him, wrapping himself around Adiem’s legs to keep him from moving. Pain erupted in his arms, spread to his neck, down his back. Through narrowing vision, Dynan saw someone – the flash of a face of a young woman – dragging Dain back and away from the gateway.
“Don’t come here,” Dynan said, trying to get through when he saw Dain struggling against her.
Adiem reached down for him, the cool countenance gone.
At the same time, a strange whirling sound, several of them, whistled through the air. An arrow slammed into the ground a kel away from Dynan, followed by another and another. One struck Adiem, and he reared back, falling to the ground.
Several more arrows flashed in, pinning Adiem where he was any time he tried to move. It didn’t seem like they were hurting him in any way, except to annoy him. He pulled out the two that hit him, and rose, growling, to his feet.
Dynan followed his gaze to the rocky heights above the shelf where several archers stood, raining arrows down onto the shelf, aimed at Adiem.
Dynan looked back to the open gateway, to his brother. Thoughts of escape cut through the fog of confusion. Adiem reached for him, but Dynan was already rolling away from him.
At the threshold of the gate, facing his brother, Dynan stopped. If he managed to escape, he’d damn the world. Dynan didn’t want to care about finding Alurn Telaerin, and hated it that he did. He thought, in the second he had, if he really was the only one who could find Alurn, he’d end up getting sent back.
Another barrage of arrows kept Adiem from reaching him. Dynan scrambled to his feet, torn between rushing to Dain, or staying. He knew what he wanted to do and knew what he had to do, two thoughts diametrically opposed. Dain gave him an incredulous ‘don’t be stupid’ look, yelling at him to come on, but Dynan shook his head.
He turned from freedom, and ran. Dain screamed after him. A loud crack echoed against the rocks, cutting off his brother’s voice. The gateway closed.
Dynan dodged out of Adiem’s grasp. Dynan raced toward the crevasses where the archers stood, still shooting down arrows. Adiem kept getting hit by them, and it was slowing him. Not a lot, but enough.
Dynan gained a rocky shelf above the clearing, and managed a few added paces in front of Adiem. Ahead there was a narrow chasm Dynan jumped across and there, he scrambled up a slanted incline. People wrapped up in rags the way Polen Forb had been, stood with bow and arrow at the ready.
They started to fall back though, and one by one turned and ran. Dynan couldn’t blame them. Madness flowed after him, a blazing anger reaching out to shred courage.
Adiem was coming. Not the crazed Fourth or the mild Second. This was the cruel, mean bastard. A sense of encompassing terror preceded this one, and everyone fled before it.
There was one archer, though, who remained, dropping the bow and arrow to sweep out a sword from its sheath. As Dynan rushed by, he thought his rescuer too short and too slight to fight off the monster coming on his heels. At the same time the wrappings fell away. He caught the glint of yellow-gold hair and blue eyes, fearlessly facing the nightmare, and he thought for an instant, she was his mother.
~*~
Chapter 16
“Fadril, you bitch!”
Dynan peered over the lip of rock he’d just slid down, clawing his way back to look. He didn’t understand why Adiem was calling her Fadril, but as he watched he realized and understood who she was. She wasn’t his mother, except at the same time, she was. The very first. The desire to stay with her didn’t leave him. Fear kept him from rising to her defense. Adiem towered over her, but she didn’t flinch.
“I see you haven’t lost even a little of your charm, Adiem,” the First Queen of Cobalt said, and nodded her head toward Dynan. “You can’t have him. He is one of my sons, Adiem. You can’t have him either.”
There was an intrinsic sense of safety in her presence. Dynan believed it. The thought of her standing against the First alone, cut him to the soul. He pushed himself off the rock, fighting down the huge desire to run, and moved to her side. He tried keeping his breath even, but he felt himself shaking.
“You see?” she said even as she gestured to stop him from getting any closer.
“Yes, another of your sniveling, weak, little brats. You should have heard him screaming for mercy.”
“And yet, here he stands against you despite your best efforts, untaken and unbroken. He’ll never turn to you. He’ll defy you the whole of his life. What will your master say, Adiem, when he learns of your failure to bring his prize.”
Adiem’s face blazed with rage, and he took a single menacing step forward. Dynan was seized by another wave of terror. He started to think she was completely crazy, standing there and facing madness.
“Yes,” Fadril said. “Do come closer, please. I’ll send you back to your makers, and the Gods will extinguish your miserable existence, once and for all. Once and for all, Adiem, so please, cross the line.”
Adiem stopped short and to Dynan’s amazement drew back by several steps. The next instant he wasn’t a man but mutating into an impenetrable cloak of darkness that melted into a wraith. It’s neck arched, and it roared at them.
Fadril didn’t move except to extend her arm, and by extension the sword in it to the fullest, keeping the point in line with the beast’s head as it rose above her. Her courage gave Dynan a measure of his own, but the stench of the wraith forced him back a step. The beast roared again, opening its mouth to bare its fangs, as sharp as the sword she held, and glinting dully in the light.
Dynan didn’t know what line she meant. The only thing he noticed was the coloring of the rock they stood on was different than it had been. It was normal, slate gray, instead of ruddy, dark red. He feared the wraith might come ahead and accept the dare.
It stood not at the utmost edge of that line, but back several kem while Fadril was at its edge. The legs of the wraith bunched, muscles tightening, preparing to spring. It could reach her, and she wouldn’t have any place to go.
Dynan jumped forward and reached Fadril the second before it struck, dragging her down and under the sweeping wing that blasted by overhead. The wraith tried to stop the turn, knocking itself slightly off balance. Dynan saw an opening, and snatched the sword from Fadril.
Dynan dodged under the curling wing, around the arm and lunged forward, leading with the sword. It struck and the blade almost jarred out of his hand. Dynan wasn’t sure if sticking it with a sword would have any greater effect than sticking it with an arrow.
He didn’t wait to find out. Dynan yanked the weapon free, turned and ran. He tripped, fell and managed to scramble back to his feet. He didn’t dare look to see what damage he’d caused, or if he’d done anything other than piss it off.
There was a lot of scrabbling behind him and the excruciating shriek of the wraith suddenly filled the air. Dynan made it four more running steps back onto gray rock before the sound dropped him to his knees. Covering his ears didn’t do anything to relieve the terrible pressure. He thought if the sound didn’t kill him, he’d never hear again.
Laughter, something alien and unexpected in this horrible land, replaced the screech of the wraith. Arms went around him. Fadril’s exuberance almost knocked him all the way over.
She laughed again and hugged him. “It’s all right. He’s leaving.”
Dynan almost couldn’t hear her past the ringing in his ears, but he saw the wraith, some distance away now, flying in a lopsided manner. Dynan wondered if he actually hurt it. Fadril hugged him again.
“That was magnificent,” she said, and kissed his cheek, finally making him smile. She looked so much like his mother. For a moment all Dynan wanted to do was pretend that she really was.
The peace of the moment didn’t last. Fadril looked off after the wraith, her face hardening. She retrieved the bow she’d dropped. He started to hand her the sword, but she shook her head.
“Keep it,” she said. “It suits you better than me. This is my weapon of choice.”
She held up the bow, drawing back and taking aim at the distant, retreating target before lowering it, and then slipping her arm through to carry it.
“History doesn’t say much about you ever fighting,” Dynan said, as he climbed to his feet, and she looked up at him.
“Really? Well that’s because history and society in general discounts the achievements and abilities of women. It’s a certainty if women ruled the world then none of this would be going on.”
Dynan gaped at her, really not meaning to offend her by the historical lack. But then she patted his arm, pointing him up the slope of a boulder, and then down into a gully between the rocks.
Dynan didn’t know where they were going, but there was a sense of safety that existed in this place that hadn’t been there before. There weren’t any bodies, for one thing, but not having a body to hide behind made him nervous, telling him something about how far into hell he’d descended.
“It was a long time ago, wasn’t it?” she said as she led the way.
“A thousand years,” Dynan said, and that seemed to surprise her.
“It doesn’t seem that long, but at the same time, even longer.”
“Polen was wrong about you,” he said. “He didn’t think you were here.”
She frowned a little at that. “I bet history didn’t ignore his accomplishments,” she said.
“There’s not so much about him either.”
“And yet you know of him,” she said. “And well you should, since he saved us all. It’s interesting what manages to survive through time. I’m guessing since you’ve not heard about me that the story Polen was writing about me wasn’t one of them.”
“He wrote about you? No, it didn’t. There’s a lot that didn’t.”
“He tried chronically everything that happened. He was constantly writing it all down. For a military man it was unusual. Some thought so anyway. He carried everything around in a pack. He had it with him when he died.”
“He was never found,” Dynan said without thinking. She and Alurn were never found either. Polen even told him they'd all died in the same place.
“Well that might explain a few things,” she said quietly, running her hand along the rock wall as they continued on the downward slope of the ravine that now rose above their heads. The rocks closed in to become a tunnel.
“I’m sorry. I’m not...You don’t seem like...” He shook his head. Nothing he was thinking would sound right.
“Like I’m dead?” she said. “You’re young and you’re alive. It’s no fault of yours that you think of death in a different way.”
“I think about it,” Dynan said almost too quietly to be heard, but she seemed to understand.
“We’re almost there,” she said. “You’ll have a chance to rest.”
Dynan was about to ask her where they were going, but he saw something on the rocks he didn’t expect, considering everything else he’d seen in this place. There was green moss growing, and blades of grass, and weeds protruding out of rock crevasses along the bottom of the ravine tunnel where dirt had gathered. It was brighter too even though it felt like they were underground.
Dynan stopped short then. Out of sight but not too far away, with a sound like music, he heard the trickle and drip of water.
Fadril reached back and took his hand, pulling him down the now widening ravine. “It’s just a little further beyond that set of boulders there.”
“Is it real?”
“Oh yes. Things are different here than what you’ve seen. It’s going to seem like paradise to you at first, but you’ll—”
Dynan pulled out of her grasp. Polen Forb warned him about paradise and things of beauty. Dynan thought it might break his heart, the realization that she might be disguised and leading him into a trap. She might be one of them.
Fadril leaned down and plucked a grass weed from among the rock. It looked like a stalk of wheat only it was green. She twirled it in her fingers, showing it to him.
“They can’t create,” she said. The simple fact of that piece of green seeped in. “They only destroy and distort what already is. I don’t know that I can help you find the courage to come see for yourself. It must be difficult to believe in anything of beauty after the horrors you’ve been through. It is real, and happily, it isn’t going away. You can wait here a while if you need to. You’re safe here.”
She handed him the weed stalk, and he took it before he thought to back away. She turned without another word, making her way toward the sound of drizzling water, around a corner of rocks where she disappeared.
Dynan stood torn between fear and wanting to believe her more than he had feared or wanted for a thing in his life where he was held for quite a long time. It occurred to him after a while, through the haze of confusion that if this was some sort of elaborate trap, then they’d sacrificed the First to bring him here. They could have had him, he told himself. They did have him, and letting him go didn’t make sense.
In the end, fear of being wrong didn’t leave him. It was the sound of water that drew him the last few steps down the ravine and around the boulder. Above him, the tunnel opened.
It was there, welling out of a crack in the rock, drizzling down to a hollowed out shelf that made a bowl for it to gather. The clear water continued on a path over the lip and down to a patch of ground. A tiny green garden of ferns and moss cushioned the drips before the overflow drained off through the cracks in the rock. The sound of it moving under the ground seemed magnified, turning to a river somewhere deep beneath the surface. Fadril leaned against the rock and watched him.
Dynan put his fingers to the surface, afraid the water wasn’t real. The blood washed clean where the water touched, and he realized he was still covered in it. His clothes were caked dry in place and still damp in others from the river crossing. None of that matter so much when he stuck his face into the water and almost drained the small bowl completely, gulping down as much as he could. For the first time in his life, he wished for a river of it to dive into. Drowning didn’t seem like such a terrible thing.