'Catch those, you bastards,' he said.
Blackthorne saw the trio tracking the skull-sized orbs of mana fire. They made no attempt to run and he got the impression they were merely curious about what was coming at them. They didn't break stride, they didn't flinch. The orbs struck them square on. Armour flared. Yellow light swept across the valley floor. An alien screech echoed out.
And when the light faded, Blackthorne could see the invaders lying motionless, burning brightly. Behind them, the machine and the animals that pulled it had stopped. Blackthorne jumped to his feet and punched the air.
'Die screaming, you fuckers!' he shouted, and cheers rose from the watching riders and mages.
At his feet, Gresse coughed. Blackthorne knelt to tend to him and found the older baron smiling.
'You still can't shake it off, can you?' Gresse said, voice sounding strong and sure.
'What, old friend?'
'That gutter language Hirad Coldheart taught you when he was living in the Balan Mountains all those years back.'
Blackthorne chuckled. 'He had a unique way with words, it's true. Effective if a little lacking in sophistication at times. Right. Think I'd better arrange a stretcher for you. That leg looks bad.'
'You should try knowing how it feels,' said Gresse.
'Lie still.'
'I hadn't thought to leap nimbly to my feet.'
Blackthorne stood and waved a rider to him. 'I need four men and I need a stretcher rigged up. There'll be plenty of material back at the lodge. Be quick. And send a mage. Baron Gresse needs his pain removed.'
'I do not need a mage, thank you very much.'
'Yes, you do, Gresse. Trust me on this. Go.'
'Yes, Baron.'
The rider turned and put his heels to his horse. The animal galloped away. Blackthorne sat on the dusty ground next to Gresse and looked down over the valley. The corpses of the invaders still burned. Behind them, the machine was quiet and the beasts were still, staring straight ahead. Some of his mages were making a slow and wary approach. One glanced in his direction and he nodded his permission for them to continue.
'I wonder who they were,' said Blackthorne.
'Garonin. Or I think that's what one of them said.'
'Well it's a name, but I was thinking a little more widely than that.'
Gresse drew in a pained breath.
'There'll be a mage here soon,' said Blackthorne.
'I'll try to contain my excitement,' said Gresse. 'So what do you think? From another dimension?'
'Probably. Good to see them folding under spell attack, though. It means we can fight them.'
'And win.'
'Easily.'
A smell of burned mana drifted across them. A moment later the valley was crowded with Garonin. Blackthorne shot to his feet, gaping. Fifty and more of them where a heartbeat before there had been none. Materialising as if dispelling a massed Beyen's Cloak spell. And these had not come merely to walk in front of the machine. As the beasts' roars split the air and they began to walk, Blackthorne could see what he assumed were weapons in the hands of most of the new invaders. They advanced.
'Gresse, I don't think we can wait for that stretcher.'
Chapter 7.
The mournful calls of the ClawBound soared above the anxious rainforest, a companion to Auum's run north with his Tai towards Ysundeneth. The proud roar of the panthers, the guttural call of the elves combining to summon the nation to the Harkening. By day a clarion call to action. By night a haunting resonance that denied rest and demanded movement.
Every creature in the rainforest heard the song. For Tual's denizens, it was an alien sound that kept them in hides, burrows and nests; for the elves, a sign of mortal peril that none dare ignore.
From every corner of the mighty rainforest they came. Temples were left untended. Villages and towns deserted. Crops abandoned and fishing fleets drawn up onto riverbanks. All making the journey that had existed before only in legend and myth, lost in the ancient writings of elven history. Still, some had personal memories of the time before they would rather forget. All gathering at the huge natural amphitheatre that the elves called Ultan-in-Caeyin, where Gods are heard.
The last gathering here had taken place in the aftermath of the Elfsorrow which humans had unleashed on Calaius and which other humans had helped defeat. Auum had not been in attendance. This time it had to be different. Then it had been in celebration, now it was in fear of extermination.
Ultan-in-Caeyin was a gem unearthed not long after the founding of Ysundeneth on the northern coast of Calaius. A huge bowl of stone and grass banks on the edge of the rainforest, carved by the Gods for their words to be heard. Ringed by sheer cliffs, bordered by river and ocean, it had been embellished over the years. A vast stage stood at the northern end away from the entrance. Bridges and paths had been laid for people to walk the short distance from the city's western edge. Hundreds of brackets for torch and lantern had been hammered into the walls. Benching had been built in vast concentric arcs. Ultan-in-Caeyin could seat two hundred thousand comfortably.
Auum shuddered as he approached the wide entrance. Elves were streaming in and that was bad enough. But inside there were, he was told, upwards of thirty-five thousand already assembled. He stopped and stared at the masses inside. The gloom of evening was descending. Cook fires were being lit all across the bowl.
'Is there no other way to the stage?'
'Straight ahead is the only way,' said Ghaal.
Auum looked over at the stage, impossibly distant through the throng and blazing with light that taunted him. The walls of the Caeyin appeared to press in, sheer and impassable, pushing the crowd in, shoving them towards him. He backed up a pace.
'I don't like crowds,' he said.
Miirt exchanged glances with Ghaal.
'We will make passage for you,' she said.
Auum nodded his thanks. 'You are sure?'
'We were not born as you were,' she said.
'Tai, we move,' said Auum. 'Quickly.'
Elves outside the warrior castes stepped aside for he and his Tai to make their way to the stage. The faces that turned towards him were anxious but cleared on sight of him. He betrayed no fear, nodding at those who bowed their heads to him though he wanted no more than to close his eyes and have it all be over.
Word of his arrival spread like oil over sword steel and a hush descended on the Caeyin.
'Even when they are quiet, they make noise enough to shatter bark,' said Auum.
His Tai kept their silence, moving fluidly at his sides. He was glad of their attentions. Fine additions to the calling though none could ever truly replace those he had lost. He would forever mourn Evunn and Duele. At least their souls had made the journey to rest with the elders.
Rebraal was awaiting them on the stage. With a trembling hand Auum acknowledged the applause that broke out.
'Why do they applaud?' he asked, taking Rebraal's arm and leading him to a dark corner at the back of the stage.
'The great Auum is among them,' said Rebraal a broad smile on his face. 'Reluctantly. Why would they not?'
'None of them knows me.'
'There is nothing anyone hates more than unfounded modesty,' said Rebraal. 'Your reputation has no need of embellishment.'
Auum faced him. 'All my work, I do for Yniss. These people are Tual's people and Tual kneels before Yniss. That is enough.'
'The world has changed since you first ran in the rainforest,' said Rebraal. 'Then, people feared the TaiGethen because they did not understand your purpose or your methods. Now, while they are still wary of you, they revere you also. They love you. It is you who protects them from harm.'
'Not this time,' said Auum. 'That is why we are here. Shorth remains silent. Yniss cannot help us.'
'He will always watch over us.'
'Only if he is able.' Auum gazed out over the crowd from the shadows. It had become obvious to most that he had no intention of speaking and the hubbub of conversation was growing once more. 'So tell me, Lord of the Al-Arynaar, how soon can we leave Calaius?'
'I'm just . . .' began Rebraal, then he chuckled. 'All right, point taken. Preparations are going as well as they can. There is scepticism and resistance as you can imagine but we are getting through to most of the people who matter. Ships are assembling. We have pledges from three hundred and we hope for more every day.'
'That is nowhere near enough.'
'I cannot produce ocean going vessels out of thin air. We should give thanks for the huge trade we have developed with Balaia or we'd be in a worse state.'
'I know.' Auum nodded. He felt weary. Like a two-day fever at its height. 'You have the administrators of Ysundeneth working?'
'They have some of the Ynissul amongst them,' said Rebraal. 'They understand.'
'So few remain,' said Auum. 'Too many chose to die, thinking we were forever safe.'
'You didn't.'
Auum felt no satisfaction. 'Elves are never safe from harm. What is it, Rebraal?'
'What do you mean?'
'You are twitching away like a stranger bitten by a taipan. Speak your mind.'
'We're just running away. Can we really not beat them?' The words came in a rush when they started. 'We have lived here so long. We have beauty and we have peace. We have the rainforest. So much to lose.'
Auum shook his head, feeling every year he had breathed the air. 'They are too strong. Even for us, and we have worked so hard to keep ourselves hidden and to build our strengths. They are relentless. A menace without conscience. Without mercy.'
He closed his eyes against the memories.
'You faced them.' Rebraal breathed in sharply. 'Didn't you?'
Auum blinked and opened his eyes onto the young elf's steady gaze. 'And I ran. It is easy for you who were born here to believe this your home for all time. I've lived through too much history ever to get comfortable. I have watched too many friends die.'
'At least you have the blood to grant you all those years.'
'It is not the blessing you think it to be,' said Auum sharply.
'I'm sorry, Auum. I didn't mean that quite the way it came out.'
Auum nodded. 'I am certain you didn't. But the nation is in peril. Old prejudices never die, they merely hide.'
'You know Ilkar once said he almost wished he had never met a human much less befriended one. Hard to outlive those you love by so many hundreds of years, he said. It was the thing he feared the most.'
'Your brother was right about that, just as he was right about many things.'
'I can't feel him,' said Rebraal. 'Is he safe?'
Auum sighed and shook his head. 'We none of us can feel those we love. Last time it was the same. The dead were not safe. Many were lost to Shorth, never to be found again. I'm sorry.'
Expectant noise rippled across the crowd in the Caeyin. Robed elves hurried hither and thither across the stage. Auum trotted back out into the light. The TaiGethen arrived thus far assembled behind him.
'It's the priests,' said one.
'Early,' said Ghaal in Auum's ear.
'That cannot be good,' said Miirt.
A crescent of Al-Arynaar warriors and mages was advancing down the wide central aisle of the Caeyin. Behind them came seven separate groups of priests and attendants, each one guarded by two TaiGethen cells. At the rear, more Al-Arynaar. Auum could just see the silhouettes of ClawBound pairs at the entrance to the bowl. And at the head of the cliffs all around the Caeyin, more ClawBound appeared. Sentinels and messengers, waiting.
Auum spared the time to wish he were up there in glorious solitude rather than in front of a crowd that was swelling every moment.
'They are not all here,' said Ghaal. He pointed out into the midst of the approaching priests. 'Ryish is missing.'
'I expected it to be so,' said Auum. 'He would not leave his temple, not while the path to Shorth is obscured. We must assume he is lost.'
Quiet replaced expectancy. Out there, where the knowledge of why they had been summoned to the Harkening was incomplete, the nervousness was beginning to grow. For many, the significance of the priests' early arrival was not lost. And anyone who cared to look at the stage to see it filling with TaiGethen and Al-Arynaar would be forgetting the food they had thought to cook. The last time Auum had been in the presence of so many of the warrior castes, they had been about to sail for Balaia. So it would be again.
When they reached the stone apron in front of the stage, the Al-Arynaar fanned out to guard its periphery. The apron, a huge slab of granite laid by the Gods, was carved with the elven religious hierarchy, depicting its many glories. Each group of priests moved to pray by its God's symbols and images.
Yniss, father of them all; Tual, of the forest denizens; Gyal, of the rain; Beeth, of root and branch; Orra, of the earth's lifeblood; Cefu, of the canopy, Ix, god of mana. All were represented, leaving a hole at their centre where Ryish should have been standing.
Everyone dropped to their knees, fingers grasping the ground or palms raised to the sky, spread like branches or covering their faces. Each elf was drawn to a lesser god in addition to Yniss. Each elf prayed. Whispering and chanting grew in harmony, amplified by the rock walls of the Caeyin. Caressing the mind and soothing away ache, pain and fear. Auum shed a tear for the beauty of the moment and for the knowledge that precious few remained.
While the prayers continued, the high priests moved onto the stage. Each wore robes of a single, simple colour and carried the words that blessed them with their authority sewn onto their robes and written in the leather-bound volumes in their arms. Auum felt a hand on his shoulder and looked up.
'My Lord Auum, it is with gladness that I see you and with desolation that I know why.'
Lysael, High Priest of Yniss, had always been possessed of a beautiful voice. Beauty that spread to her face and the shape of her gentle hands.
'Yniss keep you, Lysael. I am relieved you are here.'