The Lore Of The Evermen (Book 4) (23 page)

29

Ella waited with the forward guard as the rising sun revealed an empty beach. The only sounds were the crashing of waves and cries of gulls. Nervous, she dug her nails into her palms as she waited.

And then the sea was empty no more.

Ella felt a shiver of fear, her heart racing as tiny sails filled the horizon. The surviving ships of the enemy fleet faced no
opposition
as they carefully approached their chosen landing site; there was nothing any of the waiting defenders on the beach could do ab
out it.

“Could at least be foul weather,” Ella muttered.

“If you want me to respond, you should talk so I can hear you,” Layla said.

Crouched beside Ella, the small Dunfolk healer was a
comforting
presence. Ella had chosen to wait with Layla rather than with Tiesto, who at any rate was preoccupied with his animators and constructs.

Layla scowled at Ella, her ruddy features crinkling. “Well? Are you in the habit of talking to yourself?”

“I said the weather is beautiful,” Ella said. “I wish it wasn’t. It’ll make their landing easier.”

“Clear skies help us see too,” Layla said. “Would you rather it was raining and foggy, so you couldn’t tell which of the men in front of you was a foe or a friend?”

Ella smiled. “You’re right. Lord of the Sky, I’m scared.”

Layla put her arm around Ella and squeezed her, the grip
surprisingly
firm. “I will always be with you,” she said.

Ella let out a breath as she watched the ships grow larger in her vision, creeping inevitably closer to the coast. She could understand how Miro must feel; was any amount of preparation enough to face this? It felt like a doomed effort from the start, and they had yet to face Sentar himself.

A big warship, the foremost vessel at the point of a wedge of cruisers and motley barges, grew ever larger, and Ella fought to control her fear. She tried to tell herself she’d fought terrible enemies before.

“Remember, the plan is to wait until the landing begins in earnest, and to engage the enemy as they move through the water. We want to hold a line about knee deep. The drag of the water on the enemy should help us. We need our archers to pin them back while our swordsmen take their heads. Archers should concentrate their fire on the necromancers above all. We must stop as many in the water as we can.”

“Ella,” Layla said. “I know.”

Ella realized she was speaking to hide her terror. The closest ship was still out in deep water, but Ella could now see a golden pennant flown next to a white flag that snapped in the wind. She saw a black design on the white flag that could have been a withered tree. It was the symbol of the Akari, but they’d inherited it in turn from the Lord of the Night.

Ella tore her gaze from the warship and then gasped.

A single, solitary figure stood at the water’s edge.

Ella could swear he hadn’t been there before. The man stood as if waiting and wore a sky-blue robe, belted at the waist with a golden cord.

Ella recognized the white hair and slightly stooped shoulders that were now, somehow, regal.

Evrin Evenstar stood alone to greet the enemy.

The advancing ships held off in the deep water, still several
hundred
paces from shore. It was as if time had stopped.

Ella held her breath.

Evrin’s hands began to move.

Sparkles of light colored the air in front of him, twisting
rainbows
curling in among each other and threading together to form a startling platform. Evrin’s hands shifted in the air; Ella guessed he must be holding a scrill, but if so, she couldn’t see it. The trails of golden light whirled together, and Evrin took a step up. His hands moved faster now, faster than Ella thought possible, and Evrin took a second step forward, and then a third.

Evrin’s voice couldn’t be heard, as far away as Ella was, but she knew he must be chanting, calling on each rune as he trailed essence into the very air, connecting the new to the old.

Evrin built a glowing stairway, taking one step after another as he ascended. His creation took him past the shallows, then further still, to where the dark water met the light, and still he kept moving. He now stood high above the deep sea, and still he kept building, higher and higher, further out into the sea, as if trying to connect the white sand of the beach to the line of enemy vessels.

Evrin’s stairway continued past the dark water and farther, to where the deep blue turned to black. He was now at an incredible height, and he stopped, looking down at the ships below while the whole world waited.

Ella tried to stand, but Layla clutched her arm, pulling her back down. “He has a plan,” Layla said. “You are not part of it.”

Evrin raised his arms to the sky as the watchers on the ridge looked on with mouths gaping wide.

Evrin called in a voice like a howl, and the thunder of his speech was easily audible to all below. It was a mighty, primal sound, a cry of rage, a bellow of pain, a summons.

“Sentar!” Evrin roared.

Ella clenched her fists, her knuckles white, as she caught
movement
from the ship with the golden pennant.

Ella watched as a figure in black rose into the air.

She’d heard so much about him, but it was the first time Ella had seen Sentar Scythran, the Lord of the Night, in the flesh.

Ella’s gaze took in a man with red hair like Killian’s, though Sentar’s shade was deeper, the color of blood. The two men were too far away for Ella to see much more.

But as she watched Sentar floating easily in front of Evrin
Evenstar
, the difference in their abilities was driven home with
sudden
force.

Ella felt something terrible was about to happen.

Evrin gazed at the face in front of him. How long had it been since he’d last seen this face? How many centuries had passed since he’d banished Sentar Scythran, Varian Vitrix, Pyrax Pohlen, and the rest of his brothers to the world they’d opened up with blood?

As high as he was, wind buffeted him, curling his robe around his body. Evrin stood with his legs spread and resisted the urge to look down into the deep water. In his right hand he held a golden scrill, a metal rod as long as his hand. His left hand was empty.

“Lord of the Sky,” Sentar said, his lip curled in a sneer. “Human lover.”

“Sentar, you killed the woman I loved, and you took away what I was. Still, we are brothers. End this madness. Learn to live with the humans.”

“Live with the humans?” Sentar said. He tilted his head back as he laughed. “We’re gods, Evrin Evenstar! We’re as far beyond them as stars from insects. They swarm, they irritate, but we shine. We burn with power. Can you not feel the power, surging within you, filling your limbs with vigor? Oh,” Sentar smiled, “I’m sorry, I just remembered. You cannot.”

“They are too powerful for you now,” Evrin said. “They’ve
outgrown
us.”

Sentar looked back over his shoulder, down at the multitude of ships below. “The living will never defeat the dead. Every human I destroy feeds my war machine. Once I gain a foothold on this Empire, they will never turn me back. It will only end when I have resumed my rightful place. For humans, there is only death.”

“A plague,” Evrin said. “You and yours are a plague and nothing more. I should have killed you when I had the chance.”

“Finally getting some courage, Lord of the Sky?”

“I sent you and the others to exile out of compassion, not out of any lack of courage on my part.”

“You sent us to a nightmare world, to a fate worse than death.”

“It was a world you found for yourselves. You deserved
your fat
e.”

“If you only knew, Skylord,” Sentar spat. “If I had the power, I would revisit every moment of our brothers’ suffering onto you.”

“At least you finally acknowledge you aren’t all powerful.” Evrin smiled.

As Sentar opened his hands, Evrin spoke a series of swift words, and his robe shifted in nature. The pale blue developed a pattern, a mottling like the skin of a lizard as interlocking scales shifted up and down, coating Evrin’s body and limbs, rising up Evrin’s chin and covering his head.

A jagged bolt of black lightning shot from each of Sentar’s hands, but splashed off Evrin’s scaled armor. Sentar frowned and called on more of his power; each hand now projected two streams of dark fire, then three.

Evrin’s armor began to smoke, but he chanted continuously, adding more scales to replace those that fell away. He pointed his empty left hand at Sentar and added two sequences to his chants, blending more inflections into his steady stream of activation runes.

A silver and gold bracelet appeared on his left wrist and a matching ring came into being on his index finger. The bracelet and ring flared brightly and a bolt of blue energy shot forward, followed by a second, and then a third. Sentar raised one of his palms in a warding motion and a field of solid air flattened in front of him, Evrin’s beams diffusing across the field’s surface.

Sentar’s other hand continued with the stream of crackling fire, and Evrin called on more scales to replace those that now fell in a steady stream to the ocean below. He knew his robe wouldn’t
last long
.

Evrin expended the energy of the twin devices on his left hand at a prodigious rate. He could see Sentar’s protective field fading, and he increased the power of the bolts of blue energy to the limit.

Evrin felt heat touch his skin.

“Give . . . up . . . old man,” Sentar said through gritted teeth.

Evrin’s robe began to smoke and smolder. The skin at his chest, closest to the twisted streams of black lightning, began to sting, and now no more scales replaced those that fell into the water, striking the surface with a hiss.

“Last . . . chance . . .” Evrin gasped.

The blue robe caught fire. Evrin screamed in pain, and with the cry of agony he choked. His voice ceased chanting, and the robe began to disintegrate.

Evrin looked at the golden scrill in his right hand.

Everything until now had been a distraction.

“Finistratas,”
Evrin gasped the single word.

The scrill became a handle, and a long line of flickering blue fire, a strand of shining silver, now dripped from its tip, reaching down to the water below. Evrin lifted the handle and jerked his arm backward and then down. The blue line curled through the air, reaching around behind Sentar Scythran. The silver strand curled around Sentar’s waist.

“Almothar,”
Evrin intoned.

The scrill fused to Evrin’s hand. He could never let it go.

“Neveran.”

Evrin’s robe took on sudden weight; it was now as heavy as a mountain. Sentar’s expression registered shock, and the onslaught of black lightning became stronger. Evrin’s hair burst into flame.

Fighting the pain with all his strength, Evrin could only breathe the last of the activations sequences.

“Endara.”

The golden stairway of ethereal light disappeared, vanishing as if it had never been.

Evrin plummeted, weighed down by his dragging robe, and in his right hand the golden scrill could never be released.

He’d built the device to do one thing, and one thing only. Evrin had built the coil of silver to grab hold of Sentar Scythran and never let go.

Sentar screamed as the two men fell through the air, writhing and kicking, with limbs flailing in all directions. Evrin hit the water first and Sentar a heartbeat later; immediately they sank.

Water was everywhere, light filtering through the surface but struggling to reach the depths as the two figures plummeted to the bottom. Evrin pulled with his right arm even as his lungs heaved and his body thirsted for air.

Sentar rolled over and over, trying to untangle himself from the glowing wire. Evrin grabbed hold of the man he’d once called brother and tried to hold him as the two men hit the sandy
ocean floor
.

Sentar attacked Evrin in a frenzy. Evrin felt hands clapped to his head, and excruciating pain wracked his skull and spine, filling his consciousness with fire.

Evrin’s vision closed in until all he could see was a white tunnel with a warm golden light, beckoning him at the end.

His love called.

Evrin Evenstar, Lord of the Sky, followed her down the tunnel.

30

Ella watched in horror as the stairway of light vanished and Evrin and Sentar plunged into the water. For long minutes, only bubbles and hisses of steam indicated where they’d fallen.

Ella gripped Layla’s hand with savage intensity. “Evrin!” she screamed. She was standing now, though she didn’t remember
getting
to her feet.

All was silent. The onlookers at the beach, the distant ships preparing to unload their deadly cargos, all were still.

Then someone burst from the ocean, thrashing weakly. Ella’s heart thudded with pounding jolts as she tried to see who it was.

The figure was black.

A boat sped out from the foremost ship. The reaching hands of gray-robed necromancers pulled the man in black clothing aboard, before turning back to the ships.

Ella waited, and waited. Long moments passed. A hundred heartbeats became a thousand.

But the old man never came to the surface.

Evrin Evenstar was dead.

“Evrin,” Ella sobbed.

Layla held Ella back as she tried to pull free. Tears sped down Ella’s cheeks as she desperately scanned the surface of the water, knowing her search was futile. The battle between the Lord of the Sky and the Lord of the Night was over. Sentar was evidently wounded, terribly so, but he had emerged the victor.

The ships came forward. The warship that Sentar Scythran had returned to retreated, and soon it was hidden by the line of encroaching vessels.

The line of ships passed the site of the battle and continued forward, crossing into the aqua-blue water. There were suddenly so many of them that they fought for space. With sounds of tearing and groaning, each vessel ran aground bow-first, tilting to the side as keels ground against the sand, sails hurriedly downed.

They had no landing boats: the revenants simply poured off the sides. Tiesto had a few cannon—they would have to abandon any brought here, so most were back with Miro—and thunderous booms split the air as he fired. Splinters flew from the ships and water fountained in great splashes, pieces of enemy warriors flying into the air. Still they came.

Six ships were now aground, and dozens more found gaps between them and made their own landings. Soon the line of enemy vessels crowded the beach; Tiesto’s gunners suffered from no lack of targets.

Ella fixed her reddened stare back on the ridge and waited for Tiesto’s signal. Constructs would sink in the water so this first charge would be made by infantry. Ella would fight with them.

Along the ridge the men in green and brown held their
weapons
ready. Fighters from the free cities nervously exchanged glances while the Dunfolk archers surrounding Ella readied their bows. Ella saw enchanters in green robes and bladesingers in armorsilk. She saw faces she knew: Jehral, the only man in black, waited near Tiesto’s command center, and with surprise Ella recognized Fergus the ferryman standing not far away with a determined expression on his round face.

A clarion blared and a red light shone from the solitary dirigible flying high above, maintaining a position back toward
Castlemere
.

“Charge!”
the defenders roared with a single voice.

Ella set her mouth with anger. She’d heard Miro speak of
battle
rage, and it was something she’d felt a few times herself: as the
primate’s
army crushed the refugees at the Sarsen and at the prison camps in Tingara.

It was the rage that came when trying to right an incredible injustice.

“Go,” Layla said.

Ella ran forward with the infantry as they charged.

The rush to the water’s edge took an eternity and was over in a heartbeat. Ella ran with men and women defending their
homeland
from the darkest evil. There were thousands of soldiers, all well armored and prepared for what they were about to face.

The waist-deep water thronged with revenants.

Volleys of arrows sped overhead, plunging into the enemy
warriors
. Some wore ragged barbaric clothing, big men and women with double-bladed axes and heavy two-handed swords.
Others
wore the uniforms of their old regiments, lands across the sea now utterly destroyed. All were in advanced stages of decay, with lips
rotted
away to reveal yellow teeth, mottled black-and-blue rot
taking
hold of limbs and heads, and grotesque wounds on throats, faces, and bodies, revealing how they’d been killed, or how they’d refused to be put down since.

The defenders formed a long line in the knee-deep water. The crack of musket fire sounded from the ships, and some of the Veldrin defenders returned fire with their own barreled sticks. The arrows of the Dunfolk sprouted from enemy warriors, sending shoulders jerking back or tearing into throats, but making little impact; these warriors simply kept coming.

Ella held her wand in front of her with a shaking hand. The hazel wood felt warm in her palm, then hot as she activated it with a series of chanted runes. The prism of gold-flecked quartz sparked with yellow fire.

A snarling revenant, a woman with torn clothing revealing slashes across her breasts, shot out of the water in front of Ella. Ella sent a bolt of yellow fire into the woman’s eye, and she went down.

The enemy struck the line in numbers, and the sounds of grunting and clashing steel split the air. The Alturan swordsman beside Ella thrust at a barbarian’s neck, but the blow missed as the revenant swerved to the side. The Alturan made a second strike at his opponent’s head. The barbarian’s broadsword blocked the blow, but the Alturan’s glowing blade cut through the steel, and another head went flying.

To Ella’s right, a Halrana was having trouble with an enemy swordsman, a man who’d once been Veldrin by his blue and brown uniform. A bolt from Ella’s wand shattered the revenant’s skull into two pieces. The Halrana nodded his quick thanks.

Ella kept a wide circle around her, taking careful aim with each activation of her wand, making precision strikes to conserve power. Wherever she could, she helped the struggling swordsmen, but she could see the revenants’ numbers now starting to tell. The Alturan beside her went down and Ella shifted, closing ranks with the
next ma
n.

Ella saw more beams of yellow fire in the distance and caught sight of Elwin Goss, Master of the Academy, with a wide circle of bodies floating in the water around him. Arrows continued to plunge into the revenants but the once decisive weapon could only slow this enemy; the necromancers stayed hidden in the ships. A volley of musket fire from the enemy vessels cracked, and the Halrana on Ella’s right fell with a hole in his chest. Once more Ella closed ranks.

Ella missed her next shot, and a revenant swung a spiked mace at her head. The warrior on her right blocked the blow and
countered
with a thrust into the revenant’s face. The glowing blade tore through the snarling warrior’s cheek, sending red blood in all directions.

Ella turned and nodded her thanks, seeing it was Jehral. He gave her a swift nod in return.

The line of defenders closed ranks again and again, and still the enemy kept coming, pouring from the ships, rising from the deeper water in an unending wave.

Ella heard a trumpet blast and looked at Jehral.

“Fall back,” he panted.

Miro watched from the dirigible, carefully judging the moment when the enemy’s numbers outweighed the defenders’ power to hold them in the sea. He desperately wanted to be fighting down below, but he was working in close concert with Tiesto; their timing was critical.

More ships beached themselves along the shore toward
Castlemere
, and the line of defenders no longer covered the approach of all the clawing revenants. He couldn’t allow the line to be outflanked.

Miro ordered the retreat.

He shone a light and saw Tiesto raise a flag, hearing a
corresponding
clarion blast. The defenders fought to hold off the enemy as every second man in the line stepped backward. Then the
second
line held while the foremost fell back. Miro prayed the retreat wouldn’t turn into a rout.

Finally the defenders turned and ran. Miro’s elite palace guard, held so far in reserve, rushed down to give them time to escape. The revenants that made it to the ridge fell to intense volleys of arrows as rail bows and Dunfolk archers peppered their bodies.

Miro watched to see what the enemy commander would do. With Sentar wounded, who was leading them?

Then Miro saw a tall man standing on the beach with a cluster of necromancers. He wore a blue shirt and a three-cornered hat with a white feather. This must be Diemos, the king of Rendar.

Diemos waved an arm, and the revenants formed up; they would wait to disembark all their warriors before making their next attack. It was what Miro would do himself.

Miro drew a shaky breath as he watched the breakers roll over the dismembered bodies of revenants, mingling them together with the fallen defenders.

So far Miro’s defenders had faced stragglers, coming in from deep water in ragged numbers. The enemy had their beachhead now; the commanders and necromancers would form their warriors into an army.

More ships were unloading all the time. There was enough of a force forming up on the beach that any attempt to push them back would be suicide. Yet fully half their numbers were still on the ships. Tiesto’s cannon continued to fire while mortars rained orbs on the beached vessels, but by necessity Tiesto’s force was mobile, and Miro’s strongest weapons were on the ridge guarding the approach to Sarostar.

Miro saw the danger in the growing numbers. He didn’t want the defenders to become trapped on the ridge. Ella was down there. Every moment that passed would make retreat more difficult.

The enemy commander was clever and was waiting to
establish
his entire force on the beach. The horde on the shore was already so large, Miro struggled to encompass their numbers. In moments their commander would hurl them against Tiesto’s
cannon
.

“Fly a signal,” Miro instructed the pilot. “Send in the
constructs
. Everyone else to pull back to the defenses at Castlemere.”

A moment later there was a crash as the doors to the carts
hidden
in the forest burst open. Animators hurriedly climbed
towers
and placed tablets at their knees.

Ironmen and woodmen lumbered forward with odd, mechanical movements. The enemy hurriedly formed up, turning to face the new threat.

The constructs charged down from the ridge.

The ironmen glistened, black limbs shining as the light of early morning cast slanted rays on the steel. The polished woodmen held the left flank while ironmen held the right.

They smashed into the enemy, remorseless in their power. The golems and colossi were back at Castlemere, but this was the bulk of Halaran’s military strength, unleashed in one mad charge.
Hundreds
of Halrana constructs became swallowed by thousands of revenants.

Miro gripped the rail as the animated fought the dead.
Tearing
his gaze away from the battle, he watched as Tiesto pulled the defenders back, leading the infantry and archers along the ridge until the foremost reached the start of Miro’s long wall. Miro breathed a sigh of relief.

As the creatures of iron and wood battled the undead, soon the only people left at the ridge were the animators themselves, guiding their creations with touches of their controller tablets and
spoken
words. In a heartbeat, chaos overtook the battlefield, and the
constructs
’ careful formation broke down.

Cannon boomed from some of the beached ships whose exposed sides faced the battle, tearing through constructs and
revenants
alike.

A group of revenants broke free and charged the animators on the bank.

Miro cursed. Even against the charge, the animators held their positions. Miro’s heart went out to the courage of these men. Diemos, if the order was his, was clever.

Then something huge broke through the forest.

Miro saw a colossus stride forward in great lumbering bounds. Miro’s heart raced; he’d thought all the colossi were back behind Castlemere. Squinting, he recognized the mighty construct, and in a moment Miro knew who the animator was.

Luca Angelo sat in his controller cage, guiding his colossus with words and gestures as he fought to defend his countrymen.

A great sword blazed in one of the colossus’s huge hands. As the revenants rushed up the ridge, ready to crush the defenseless
animators
on their towers, a single stroke of the sword tore through a dozen bodies. A foot stomped on a revenant, and the
colossus’s
free arm swiped at the ground, sending a bunch more flying through
the air
.

The ironmen and woodmen on the beach were now overwhelmed, their charge ended. The shallow waters heaved with
broken
bodies. The animators scrabbled down their ladders, and the brown-robed Halrana ran for safety, back toward Castlemere.