Paul Thompson: Alliances

“Take them,” the priest urged.

Like a striking viper, the elf’s gloved hand shot out, tearing the parcel from the old man’s grasp. With trembling fingers, he laid a single wafer on his tongue. The disk melted at once, releasing a rush of flavor. The crystal dew in the wafers was collected one tiny droplet at a time from the leaves of plants and flowers all over Silvanost. The life’s breath of the plant was captured in every drop, and every plant imparted a distinctive flavor. Even more unique was the earthy savor of pollen. Rose was always unmistakable, as were violet and nasturtium. This particular pollen had come from sunflowers. The elf’s mouth was filled with the golden soul of summer, as if sunshine had been turned into fine powder.

“Consider the ants,” the priest said. “Though small, they are mighty in unison.”

Clutching the packet of wafers close to his heart, the elf watched his benefactor rise and depart. The priest’s back was covered with the same small brown bundles as his chest, bats that squirmed against each other as the old fellow’s heavy footfalls jostled them. The elf realized the chaplet of green leaves wasn’t resting on the priest’s head. Its woven tendrils emerged from the skin of his brow.

The priest paused and looked back. Lifting a hand, he said, “Farewell, Porthios. You have yet a part to play.”

In that instant, the elf knew his mysterious benefactor. He dashed forward as the priest shuffled around a curve in the path and was lost from sight. Porthios wasn’t swift—his legs were stiff from disuse and his burns—but the priest was out of view for only a few seconds. Yet when Porthios reached the bend in the road, the old human was gone. The dust clearly showed the prints of his bare feet ending a yard ahead.

Porthios stared dumbly down at the abrupt end of the footprints. The single wafer he’d eaten caused his stomach to knot with raging hunger. He put another wafer in his mouth, waited until it dissolved, then retraced his steps to the waterskin the priest had left behind. The contents tasted like Qualinesti nectar, which surprised him. Nectar was clear as water, yet he had seen the old human drink red wine from that same vessel.

Why should he be surprised? A god could do anything.

Porthios took another drink, capped the waterskin, and slung it over his back. Cinching his rag sash tight, he started down the path, in the same direction the priest had taken. The hopeless torpor that had enveloped him was gone, even as the oppressive heat had subsided with the sunset. He had been given a message, one he could not ignore. Whatever lay ahead, he had a powerful ally. Many more would be needed before the wrongs of recent days were righted, but he would find them.

Putting his back to no place special, he made straight for nowhere worth going.

The world changed in a flash.

One moment Kerianseray was riding to her doom against a swarm of Khurish nomads; in the next instant she was swallowed by a sphere of light so bright even clenched eyelids could not keep it out. After the flash, she saw nothing, heard nothing, and, aside from a slight sensation of coolness, felt nothing.

I am dead, she decided, struck from behind by a cowardly nomad. It was just as the old saying had it: you never see the blow that kills you. Kerian was surprised but not alarmed by death. Leaving her comrades behind and going off to face the nomads alone had been her choice. Life did not seem so dear with Gilthas turned against her. By removing her from command of his armies, he had not only demeaned her abilities, he had impugned her honor. Worse, his continued distrust wounded her pride. She couldn’t bear to remain with a partner who trusted her so little.

The notion death had claimed her vanished as feeling returned. She felt herself tumbling, air rushing by her face. She could again feel her arms and legs. Given that she’d been mounted on horseback, the fall was unnaturally protracted. Long after she should have crashed into the parched sands of Khur, she kept falling. Her useless eyes streamed wind-driven tears, so she closed them. On she fell, tumbling head over heels through damp, chilly air. Bards often sang of what lay beyond death, but never had she heard of an afterlife like this.

Gradually she became aware of light against her eyelids. She opened them, blinked several times, and realized she could see. No sooner had sight returned than she wished fervently to be blind again.

She was high in the sky, plummeting through broken white clouds toward the distant ground. The knowledge was so astonishing that at first she couldn’t breathe. When she could, she took a deep breath of cloud and screamed.

It wasn’t fear erupting from her throat. Fear was an old adversary Kerian had bested long ago. Hers was a shriek of pure rage. Her instantaneous shift from the battlefield outside Khuri-Khan to this lofty point could have been accomplished only one way: by magic. Someone had interfered with her last stand.

Her scream died away, smothered by iron will and the tearing wind. By spreading her arms and legs out from her body, she managed to halt her dizzying tumble, and ended up facing the ground. Her armor was gone, how or why, she couldn’t say, and her sweat-stained hacketon rippled and billowed as she plummeted.

The clouds thinned and she saw the ground clearly for the first time. She was not falling toward the desert kingdom of Khur, that much was certain. Beneath her shimmered a body of greenish water, a lake perhaps or a broad river. Leafless treetops jutted from its surface, as did broken pinnacles of stone. Moss clung to them, and vines trailed from treetop to spire to water like rotting shrouds. Everything was deeply shadowed, though the sun was still above the western horizon. She could see little but turbid water and desolate ruins. The rest was obscured by mist.

The stench of decay filled her nose. This was no crystal spring beneath her. She was falling near the western shore of the lake or river. A wide mudflat ringed the water’s edge, connecting the fetid water to the forested shore. It was confusing, seeing it all from such a height, but the terrain didn’t seem familiar. Stumps of stone towers, mottled by lichen and dull green moss, poked through the water here and there. Their tops were shattered as though lightning-struck. Remnants of a broken causeway connected some of the towers.

As the ground drew nearer, Kerian was suddenly aware of the speed of her descent. Fetid water, broken towers, and moss-encrusted trees all were rushing toward her at an alarming rate. She drew her knees to her chest and hoped the water was deep enough to contain her plunge.

Gathering herself mentally for what was to come, she saw Gilthas’s face. He’d betrayed her, disowned her, and yet it was him she saw on the cusp of death. Pushing thoughts of her fickle, still-loved husband away, Kerian closed her eyes and tucked her head into her arms.

Suddenly her fall was arrested. Her hands and feet flew out, and her teeth clashed together so hard that she saw stars. She found herself borne up by unseen forces, as though something had seized her by the scruff of her neck and brought her up short, thirty feet above the water. She descended slowly for the space of a few alarmed heartbeats, then the restraining force vanished as quickly as it had come. Feet first, the Lioness hit the scummy green water.

The air was driven from her chest, not by the impact, which had been scarcely harder than a fall from a galloping horse, but by bone-numbing cold. Although high summer mantled the land, the water was as frigid as the gray seas off Icewall.

She sank, stunned, into the murky depths, weighed down by her hacketon as surely as she would have been by her armor. When she finally came to herself, daylight was only a pale green oval far above. With no knife, she attacked the lacings of her heavy clothes with bare fingers. She couldn’t budge the swollen leather ties. Her lungs burned and the compulsion to inhale was becoming unbearable. Her head thundered. Frantic, she abandoned the lacings and tore at the quilted cloth itself. Weakened by sun and sweat, the material gave and she was able to wriggle free of its killing embrace. She toed off her boots and kicked hard for the surface.