Only two Chul avoided the flames, one man and one woman. They raced up the slope and towards the shelter of standing stones, just black silhouettes against the wall of fire at their backs. Ijanna reached for another bolt, but a curved dagger flew forward and landed in her shoulder. She screamed and fell to her knees, her strength gone.
The male Chul drove a sword straight through the meaty part of Kath’s right leg, pinning him to the ground. Kath howled in pain. He swung his axe but the Chul knocked it from his grip, so Kath smashed the warrior in the jaw with his mailed fist and knocked him down the hill.
The female Chul kicked Kath in the face and sent him onto his back, then drew a wickedly curved blade and closed in on Ijanna.
Ijanna Breathed the Veil. Her wounded flesh knit itself together with painful speed and her eyes snapped wide open as a wave of energy shot through her body like a bolt of lightning. Her hands found the
thar’koon
where they’d fallen to the ground. The knife in her shoulder smoldered and smoked before it fell to pieces.
The Veil took over. She moved in a blur, no longer in control of her own actions. Whispers scraped at her mind. She saw the Black Tower, felt herself moving in its shadow. Black lightning danced across her vision.
I am no one’s victim.
She rose to her feet as the woman came close and drove the
thar’koon
into her attacker’s chest. The dead black swords chilled with power, but the woman’s blood hissed as Ijanna cut her open from groin to neck. Intestines spilled and steamed on the dead desert floor.
Burning bodies pulled themselves up and out of the trench at the bottom of the hill. Even from fifty yards away Ijanna saw the rage in their eyes.
“Kath, come on!” she shouted. He collapsed into her arms, and it took all of Ijanna’s strength to hold him up. Flaming shadows rose behind them, immolated warriors who moved forward in spite of the flesh dripping from their bones.
She and Kath worked their way up into the cover of the standing stones. Blood pooled from Kath’s wounded leg as they stumbled up the hill, but he tried his best to keep his weight from smothering her.
The Chul’s howls cut through the air and raised the hairs on the back of her neck. A small field of broken stones was all that stood between them and their attackers. The Chul rolled in the dirt to douse the flames, then gathered their weapons and started after them.
Kath looked back.
“Go,” he said.
“
Don’t be stupid,” she said. “You’re supposed to help me. You can’t do that if you’re dead.”
“
I can’t help you if
you’re
dead, either,” he barked.
No. It won’t end like this.
The night wind threw dust and debris out of the Bonelands. Thunder ripped at the sky like the snapping of a massive bone. Memory of her dreams came at her, the Black Tower, the circle of Skullborn children, the dark lightning.
Kath took up position beside a rock, readied his axe, and cursed when he realized he’d left the crossbow down below. All he had as a backup weapon was his dagger.
Ijanna stared at the
thar’koon
blades. They were cold and thin, dark metal striated with veins of white. Power pulsed through the weapons. Veilcraft had been used to construct the artifacts, which had been forged with the specific purpose of tracking down the Blood Queen. That meant it had to contain some trace of her power…power she could use.
The fires were dying. The Chul were just edged shadows in the moonlight as they ascended.
Ijanna focused. The deathly chill of the Veil flowed up from the blades and into her arms. She felt her heart slow, and blood pulsed thickly through her veins. Everything seemed to fade, like she drifted on the surface of a turgid sea.
The Chul’s Skull of the Moon was more than some magic emblem: it was a runic key which unlocked the potential in their bodies and minds, a means by which they tapped into their own primal energies. The Veil coursed through the deepest recesses of every human soul, for it was the power source which allowed people to
live
. That innate energy was impossible to tap into even by mages, save in the rarest of circumstances.
The Skull of the Moon uses those energies
, Ijanna realized. It was similar to
dae’vone,
the dreamwalking. The Chul’s vile sorcery and
dae’vone
were just two ways of reaching the same untapped power, that vast web of dormant magic strung between all living beings.
And since the
thar’koon
were designed with trace elements of that power embedded in their folded steel, I have a direct conduit to the energy the Chul are using to make themselves unstoppable.
She closed her eyes. The power of the
thar’koon
pulsed in her hands. She opened her mind to the sky, felt the night bleed into her. When she took a breath she imagined herself swallowing moonlight.
Kath called out, but his voice was distant and faded. Ijanna felt her thoughts turn molten. The pulse of her heart sounded in the distance, a beat of thunder.
The Chul were upon them. Kath snarled and braced himself. A blade took him in his side, but he knocked the weapon away and put his axe-blade through the man’s head.
Her consciousness floated above the battle, a spirit of fog and vapor. Centuries of power roiled through her blood. Ijanna saw flashes of violence, black fires burning in the night. She saw the girl, and the tree. Her mind cast to the dreamscape, and there, mired in the sea of unconscious energies, she came upon the pale and dripping beacons of the Chul.
Time was running out. Ijanna squeezed through the frames of seconds and rushed back into her body. Utter cold lanced across her skin and turned her bones to ice.
Her eyes opened. The last few Chul glowed in her vision, their runic masks shining bright like exploding stars. Power hammered through her mind. She glimpsed through the doorways to the untapped Veil in the Chul’s souls, doors opened by the Skull of the Moon masks they’d painted on their flesh. She sensed more than just those few: there were others who wore the arcane war paint, scattered far and wide as they carried out murderous missions for the Witch Mother.
Ijanna reached for them all. Physical distance was intangible, nothing more than an inconvenience. They’d all tapped into that power and left themselves vulnerable to mirror shards of nightmare, repressed memories of torture and pain.
She smelled their skin cook and felt their hearts stop. Not all of them were affected – a few of the more powerful Chul managed to pull away in time – but most fell to the ground dead, their minds shredded from within.
Sensation returned to her body. Blood dripped from her nose and the breath escaped from her lungs.
Twenty-Seven
Kath couldn’t believe his eyes. If he still held any doubts as to how powerful Ijanna was they were easily wiped away after he watched her kill a half-dozen Chul with just a thought.
Their bodies slumped to the desert floor, still charred and bloodied from being set alight and falling into the trench. Kath had taken serious wounds in his shoulder and thigh, as well as a nasty gash across his face and another cut on his left hand. It hurt to breathe, and every motion made him wince in pain. He grew more dizzy by the second, but he stumbled over to Ijanna as she stood stunned, seemingly drained of her strength.
“Ijanna,” he said as he fell next to her. He wanted to keep falling and never get up. Every time he thought he’d been through the worst of it another jolt of hurt lanced down his limbs, rattling his teeth and making him hiss. His eyes squeezed shut in agony.
Ijanna collapsed just before he reached her. Kath took her head in his hands. She was sweaty, almost feverish, her blonde hair pasted to her scalp. Her breaths came quick and shallow, and she seemed to have passed out.
He heard a scream from down in the trench. He’d dropped his axe, so he gently set Ijanna down on the ground and struggled over to his weapon. The pain from his shoulder and leg were so intense he thought he’d be sick.
Axe in hand, Kath rose to his knees and stared down the stony hill. A shadow made its way out of the rift and moved in the opposite direction.
“Ijanna, get up,” he said quietly. She lay there, shaking as if seized by a terrible chill. “Ijanna, please…I need you to wake up.”
What did you do?
he wondered.
And what did it cost you?
All he could tell was that she’d somehow used the
thar’koon
, and that had granted her the ability to release some form of magic that had struck all of those cannibal bastards down.
What the hell am I supposed to do now?
He wondered if there was some way he could heal her.
He watched the shadow recede into the darkness at the edge of the clearing below. There was no way he could pursue the killer, but Kath kept his eyes on the fleeing figure while he tore strips of cloth from his shirt so he could tie tourniquets around his arm and leg. He was losing a lot of blood, and Kath knew if he didn’t staunch the flow quickly he wouldn’t do anyone any good.
Once he tied off his wounds – the tourniquets were sloppy, but he was in so much pain he didn’t care – he gulped down several mouthfuls of water from his canteen. The clouds were returning, and they blanketed the moon and darkened the landscape. He kept an eye out for the last Chul, and he only hoped the man was too injured from the fire and whatever Ijanna had done to him to have any fight left in him. Kath wasn’t sure if he was up to another battle.
He remembered one of his scouting patrols, an early assignment with the Ebonmark Watch. He, Gorg and Jurok had been riding the south road, one of the lesser trails used by small bands of merchants out of Jorgaveth. Most of the job had been waiting – waiting on people they’d been sent to escort, for bandits to attack, for signs of Tuscars. Sometimes it was nerve-wracking, and it was usually boring, but being on those patrols had helped make Kath patient and taught him to carry on even when he was smothered by a sense of fear.
Goddess, those times were simple compared to what I’m going through now.
Ijanna didn’t wake. Time passed while Kath bandaged himself up, and though he’d watched for the Chul survivor he’d also kept a close eye on Ijanna to make sure she was still breathing. He didn’t have the strength to put his armor back on so he sat there shirtless.
Kath tried to decide what to do about Ijanna. He knew little of the Veil aside from what she’d told him, and even less about the
thar’koon
. If there was some way he could help her he didn’t know what it was.
He gently removed Ijanna’s cloak, set part of it under her head and covered her with the rest. He opened his canteen and tried to get her to drink, but the water just ran down the side of her face. She murmured something, so quiet that even when he put his ear close to her mouth he still couldn’t make out the words.
Kath thought about home. He thought of Drogan and Calestra, of Julei and her nameless cat. He thought of his mother. He wanted so much for them to be together again, all of them, but that time was past, and would never come again.
Ijanna’s hand suddenly shot out and took hold of Kath’s arm. He jumped in fright. Her eyes were shut, but she gripped him as if seized with terror. He grimaced as she clawed into his skin.
Something was happening inside her. Wisps of black smoke escaped from between her lips. She breathed deep, and for a moment he thought she was going to gag, but she just lay there and held onto him, and for some reason he feared that if he broke contact it would somehow harm her.
He heard something. Kath turned, axe in hand, and looked out through the stones. The plains to the north stretched on forever. Clefts of rock and gnarled trees shook in the wind, and shadows danced across the broken desert landscape. His eyes went back to the hill and he realized with horror that the last Chul was headed straight for them, but he was still at some distance and moved slow.
Kath’s heart hammered. He stood up and leaned against one of the rocks. Blood pounded in his ears and his axe felt too heavy.
I can’t just sit here
, he thought. He had to intercept that bastard and keep Ijanna safe. Fear iced through his gut, and for a moment he thought he was going to retch, but Kath thought of his family.
I’m going to see them again
, he thought.
I can do this.
Gritting his teeth in pain, Kath hobbled down the hill, keeping his eyes locked on the Chul as he drew to within a few hundred yards. He had to move carefully so he didn’t fall. Every step was agony, and the cut on his face stung beneath each snap of the wind. He imagined he looked half a corpse, especially without his armor on.
The air was almost silent. Even the wind faded as he made his way down the slope. Kath silently prayed.
Corvinia, grant me the strength to do what must be done. Give me the courage and resolve to face this foe, and all the foes I’ve yet to face in the name of what is good. Forgive me, Goddess, for all of my weaknesses, but I am ever your humble servant. It’s been a long while since I’ve asked for your help, and for that I beg your forgiveness. These are confusing times for me. All I want is to do what’s right.