Daybreak (39 page)

It happened too quickly for Declan to follow: from somewhere among the crows dropped another sort of beast. It was a tawny bolt with blackened eyes and a great, curved beak — a hawk.

Its talons swung out as it struck, crushing the giant as if he wasn’t anything more than a rabbit. Declan heard the crunch of the soldier’s armor as the talons dug in. The last thing he saw was the monster’s wicked beak: it flashed down and returned with an arc of red.

Declan roared. Black flooded his vision until all that was left was a narrow strip of light. The monster’s eyes swelled inside the strip — growing, burning, taunting.

He was going to rip them out.

He was going to
rip them out
!

The hawk monster matched his roars with a screech. Its wings burst open and its black, maddened eyes locked upon Declan’s. A lion woke inside his chest: it stretched its mighty limbs to his fingers and toes. It filled his lungs with its roar. The lion grew until his skin could barely hold its strength. It would split him down the middle if he didn’t calm it quickly.

And there was only one way to sate such a beast.

He grabbed the hawk’s talons the moment they slid into his vision. Its struggling only swelled his limbs, made his blood burn hotter. The lion roared as it smelled the monster’s fear. Declan slung the hawk’s body against the ground. He shattered its bones and drove its flesh into the dust.

But the lion didn’t calm.

No … it wanted more.

Crows fell upon him, drawn to the hawk’s dying screech. Declan’s vision blackened against their caws. Soon he could no longer see the battle before him …
 

But he could feel it.
 

Bones snapped against his fists. Flesh gave way beneath his hands. He crushed them, he stomped them. A warm, sticky cloud wrapped around his body. Its tendrils scraped down his back and across his chest — maddening him with its hold.

Then all at once, the flesh and bones were gone.

His fists pounded against something that didn’t fight him back. It didn’t scream. No matter how hard he struck, it only made one sound:

Thunk
…
thunk
…
thunk
…

Cold crusted over his body. It seized his limbs and stole the roar from his chest. Declan tumbled out of the blackness and back to solid earth.

A strange blue light covered everything. It gave the blood on his knuckles a purplish sort of shine. His breaths came out like smoke. When he dragged his chin from the dirt, he saw he’d been trapped beneath some sort of window.

It arched over him — a stone’s top of blue glass that shimmered and froze the air. Its sides were frosted up. Declan crawled over to the nearest one. There were dark smears beneath the frost. He could make out the clear marks of his fists.

His tunic was soaked in sweat and gore, but there was a clean patch on his elbow. He scrubbed a hole into the frost and stared out at the shimmering world beyond.

What he saw brought the lion roaring back.

Jake stood beside the window. One of his hands was stretched out towards Declan, his glove pulsing in time with the blue window’s light. He raised the other at the coming horde: a storm of screeching crows.

They were a wave of talons and beaks, a mass of murderous eyes. Declan’s rage swelled up again. He beat the window with his fists. But it never shook, it never budged.

The crows had come to within an arm’s reach of Jake when a light erupted from his hand. Declan heard a low
boom
and the crows’ bodies went flying backwards. The ground beneath him trembled. Most of the monsters simply tumbled away and clawed themselves back into a panicked flight. But those closest to Jake burst into tiny shreds of black.

No sooner had the crows gone than the world beyond lit up with a fury of colorful bolts. They flashed so brightly that Declan’s eyes began to ache. Jake slowly disappeared inside the storm of colors until all Declan could see was his fingers — the hand that held the blue window tightly.

Declan didn’t know what was happening. There was a constant noise outside: the crashes and rolls of a thunder that never seemed to stop. He wouldn’t be any good trapped beneath the window. “Let me out, you clodded mage! Let me out!”

Slowly, the flashing stopped and the colors faded back. Declan jumped when Jake’s body fell against the window. His face was twisted, pained. Sweat stained the glass where his skin touched. There were red lines coiled all around his chest, neck, and limbs. But he still managed to keep one hand lifted towards the window.

Jake’s eyes were closing. His teeth were bared as if he stood beneath the lash.

Declan threw his fist against the glass in a panic, and the noise seemed to wake him. He shook his head at Declan’s cries and sank to his knees.

Men strode out of the clouded world beyond. Each one had a red line gripped in his fist. They tugged on their holds, dragging Jake further onto the ground. And Declan realized they must be mages.

“Kill him,” one of the mages grunted, his voice ragged with strain. He jerked his head at a mage beside him — one who stood smaller than the rest. “You do it. Your ropes are too weak to do us any good.”

“I can’t,” the smaller mage pleaded. His voice was that of a child. But when a red line appeared upon the boy’s wrist, he stepped forward.

Declan could see his face: he was a seas boy hardly over the age of ten. Though the other mages howled at him, he held his staff stubbornly to his chest — his eyes burning into Jake’s. Soon his arms began to shake badly. Then his whole body shook. He bit down so hard upon his lip that the skin around it turned white. 

Jake pulled himself up into a sit. But his face was so drenched that his spectacles slid off the end of his nose. He didn’t seem to notice when they struck the ground. He didn’t lean to pick them up.

“Do it,” Jake grunted through his teeth. “It’s not worth the pain — you can’t fight it.”

“No!”

The boy jumped backwards at Declan’s roar. “I don’t want to! Please,” he twisted to the mage who’d given the command, his body trembling so badly that he could hardly keep his feet, “please don’t make me.”

“It’s good for you, lout. The more you do it, the easier it gets. Now quit your sobbing and kill the battlemage!”

“One explosion spell to my head,” Jake whispered. “One quick blast, and I won’t feel a thing. You’ll never have to see my face — it’ll be easier if you don’t have to see it.” He glanced at Declan from over his shoulder. “Once I’m dead —”

“No! You’re not dying!”

“— the shield will break. You’ll have to run for the castle.”

“I’m not running anywhere, you clodded mage! I’m going to rip their slimy guts out through their gullets! I’m going to snap their necks across my knee! I’ll — I’ll — argh!”

Declan dug his hands beneath the window’s lip and tried to wrench it from the ground. He begged for the darkness, for the strength he needed to throw it aside. But every time the lion raised its head, a blast of cold wind knocked it down.

“Do it!” the mage hissed again. He turned his glare onto Declan. “I’m looking forward to shutting that one’s mouth.”

The boy’s shackle went from red to a burning white. Tears streamed down his face as his legs dragged him forward a half-pace at a time. His body shook so badly that his staff wavered as he pointed it at Jake’s face. It swept from left to right, a dangerous light growing at its end, until it finally halted — aimed directly between his eyes.

Jake said something, but Declan couldn’t hear it over his roars. He threw his body into the window. His shoulders bruised and his head rang fiercely; his knuckles were so torn that he could no longer feel the pain. But no matter how he fought, the window held — and the boy’s spell grew brighter.

A blistering orb wavered at the staff’s end. It screeched as it grew, a terrible power building up behind it. Then all at once, the light went out.

“Stop!” the boy cried. He threw his staff away and his body collapsed upon the ground. His limbs coiled and his head rose as if someone gripped him by the roots of the hair. His eyes were strangely empty as he spoke: “Don’t kill that battlemage — he might be useful. Bring him back to me.”

One of the mages who held Jake’s ropes looked as if he’d just been slapped. “He’s too dangerous, Ulric! We can barely hold him down —”

“Bring him to me!” the boy screamed.

All around the circle, the mages’ shackles lit up red. Even the crows’ collars glowed hot. They’d gathered boldly behind the mages as soon as Jake was bound. But the second the red light bloomed across their throats, they took off in a thick, startled cloud. A number of hawks swooped into the space the crows had left behind. They clawed impatiently at the ground and shattered the air with their screeches.
 

Finally, it seemed as though the mages had no choice.

“Hold your spells. Do
not
let him loose,” the lead mage barked.

They held their impetuses towards Jake while they struggled to mount the hawks one-handed. The boy managed to drag himself to his staff before a hawk wrapped its talons around him. It took off with a swoop of its wings and a blast of earth.

Declan had stopped fighting the moment the boy screamed. But when a hawk moved to grab Jake, the darkness began to cover his eyes once more.

He tried to yell. He wanted to tell Jake to get onto his feet and fight back. But the lion wouldn’t let him. Instead of words, maddened roars tore from his lips. The world was growing smaller and hazed.

Jake lay unmoving upon the ground — collapsed beneath the weight of the red spells. All of his strength seemed to be bent upon the hand that held the blue window: it trembled against the pull of the ropes, but didn’t fall. Declan’s fury rose with every twitch of his fingers. The lion grew stronger.

A cool voice came from somewhere beyond the madness — the warning of the lead mage: “Tell your Prince that Midlan requires supplies. Give His Majesty what is owed, or he’ll send his army back to destroy your pitiful region. You’ve been warned, giant.”

The hawk that held Jake crushed him with its weight and bent its twisted face down to screech inside his ear. He cried out, twisting against the pain. In the last moment before he was taken, Jake’s eyes dragged over to Declan.

And the lion overcame him.

*******

Emptiness stretched beneath him. The world was dim and silent. Declan lay upon the edge of sleep. His mind wavered on the wall between a pale blue light and the infinite black beyond. One strong wind might send him over the edge. He couldn’t wait for the winds to blow, wouldn’t leave his fate to chance.

Declan leaned forward and braced himself for the fall.

His chin struck the earth as his body jolted. The pale blue light gave way to shimmering, frosted glass. A monstrous shadow stood just outside: a beast with dozens of tiny hands, all of them pressed and clawing against the window.

Blood coated his every inch. There wasn’t a patch of his hide that didn’t sting him. It took several moments for Declan to wipe the frost away, and the smears of blood away from that.

The shadowed monster burst out with an army of tiny voices. Its hands beat upon the glass where Declan’s arm swept by. But it wasn’t until he’d managed to clear a patch away that he saw the monster’s faces — all of them freckled, smiling and pressed just as tightly against the glass as they would fit.

Their little fists pounded into the window; their voices rang out in a chorus:
 

“Nadine! Nadine!”

She crammed in among them and her face lit up with relief. “You are awake! Are you hurt? Where is —?”

“What in all clods happened?” a new voice bellowed. Brend gathered a clump of children in his lanky arms and set them aside, squeezing into the narrow gap left behind. His brows rose to nearly touch his spikey crop of hair at the sight of Declan. “I was only gone to help the Grovers a few days — hardly enough time to fuss over. But when I come back, Darrah’s crying, one of my guards has gotten himself ripped to pieces, and my General’s been magicked to the ground! Everybody’s going on about a flock of giant crows, but nobody knows where they came fr —”

“Midlan,” Declan grunted. He squinted against the throb in his head and pressed his face against the cold glass. “The King sent crows … and mages. Jake fought them off, but they … they took him.”

Nadine gasped, and the children broke erupted into a mass of questions.

“What happened?”

“Who took him?”

“Where’s Jake?”

The last question came from Marion. She had Jake’s spectacles clutched in her hands and held them out to Nadine — as if the offering would somehow bring him back.

But it wouldn’t.

Nadine took the spectacles from her and gave her hand to the eldest boy. “Take your brothers and sisters home, Thomas. We will be there in a moment.”

Declan couldn’t bear to meet their eyes, to see their faces. He leaned heavily against the window and stared at the blood-soaked ground at his knees. Only once they’d marched out of earshot did he dare to speak.

“Jake held the monsters off of me … he saved my clodded life. And they took him for it. I couldn’t … I couldn’t stop them!”

He slung his fist into the frosted glass and the jolt of pain shocked him. There were gashes down his arms, punctures in his flesh. His tunic had been torn to rags.

A sudden heat pressed inside his wounds and made him wince. He looked up in time to see the blue shield disappearing — melting like frost against summer winds. Nadine gasped again when the last of the shield faded and she saw the reach of his wounds.

“Bring me ointment and bindings,” she said sharply.

Declan realized that a whole company of giants stood behind Brend. They’d been kicking through the twisted pile of hawks and crows, their mouths agape. Two of them split away at Nadine’s command and went sprinting for the castle.

Her hands grasped his face, but Declan hardly felt it. His heart was too sore to feel it. The memories of Jake’s face, of his body twisted in pain — they jabbed him each time they passed. And Declan’s failure echoed inside his head: