“Mah!”Sylcatha roars. A gout of fiery soul-song channels between her and her licorneir. They rush to that broken form, and Sylcatha casts herself from the saddle and attacks the chaeora with her sword, hacking and hewing. I slide out of the saddle as well and back away quickly, allowing Kyrsidar to burst into flame at last. The licorneir tears at the chaeora cord alongside her rider, but the dark influence of those fibers douses her magic, forcing her to back away. I cannot tell if Lathaira still lives.
An inhuman roar drags my attention roughly to one side. I turn, stare through the barrier, and my heart drops into a well of horror. Another smoldering licorneir body lies just on the other side, trapped under another evil, shimmering, spell-wrapped net. I know who he is in an instant, even without his burning red flame.
“Elydark!” I breathe. Then I turn to Sylcatha, desperate for her help. But she is too caught up in her own fear for her mother. She cannot help me, not now.
I curse viciously; then my eyes land on something lying on the ground, close to the tangled chaeora snarl. A hugevaritarblade. Lathaira’s weapon, dropped, perhaps in her struggle to free herself and her licorneir. It’s much too large for me to comfortably wield. But it’s better than nothing.
I grab the weapon, haul it up with both hands, and rush for the narrow gap in the spell-barrier. Perhaps Lathaira and her big licorneir were trying to open it when the netting was dropped. It’s tiny, but I can just manage to squeeze through if I toss the sword in front of me, turn my body sideways, and push. The searing heatof magical energy ripples up and down the barrier as the Miphates seek to reestablish their compromised spells. I scream with pain, convinced I’ll be trapped and cut in two. With a last desperate burst, I emerge out the other side.
The pandemonium is no less here than it was outside the barrier. The other two giants have been brought down now, but Noxaurians have penetrated through other gaps in the spellwork and assault the walls and gate. Trolls fight them, swinging great clubs as they decimate their numbers.
Though I search for him, I cannot see Taar. But he must be close; he would not leave Elydark pinned down under the chaeora like that.
Heaving Lathaira’s sword up once more, I stagger toward the smoldering licorneir body. Dead trolls lie all around him, gruesomely hewn down. Oh gods—one is hacked clean in two. Blood and guts spill before my eyes. I turn to one side and vomit violently. I am grossly unprepared for this.
But I pull myself together at last, and approach the trapped licorneir. “Elydark,” I cry, whether with my voice or my spirit, I hardly know. “Elydark!”
A little shimmer of red appears in the cracks of his blackened skin. Oh, great gods, he’s still alive! His eye rolls wildly, seeking mine through the net weave, and I see a jolt of pure surprise in his deep gaze.
I survey the net. The trolls seem to have been in the process of staking it in place before they were slaughtered. Part of it has beencut through as well, and I think if I can just cut in one more place, Elydark will be able to get free. I brace myself, heaving Lathaira’s sword. It’s not a weapon intended for chopping work like this. What I wouldn’t give for a good ax! But this is all I’ve got.
I bring the blade swinging down. It connects with the chaeora fibers, but the reverberation when it hits the ground stuns my arms and causes me to drop the sword. I scream an inarticulate curse, retrieve my weapon, and, limbs still vibrating with pain, hack again. The chaeora netting has been reinforced with some kind of Miphates’ magic—the fibers shimmer with a strange, silvery light, twisted around the black strands. I’m not going to let them defeat me.
I raise my sword a third time. Bring it slicing down. On this third blow, the fibers give at last, and the net loosens. Elydark manages to get his body partially upright and struggles to pull his cloven hooves under him. Little tongues of fire erupt over his flanks as the influence of the chaeora reduces. His white-ringed eye finds mine.
Suddenly a voice appears in my head, weak, but urgent:Help him. My Vellar . . . help him!
His eyes shift, looking beyond me into the battlefield. I turn.
My heart drops.
The Shadow King stands before me, looming tall in my vision. Towering and monstrous, clad in dreadful stone armor, he is like a creature from legend. His helmet is gone, and I recognize his beautiful, terrifying face, a face I have only ever seen masked in courtly courtesy, now unmasked—suffused in battle rage.
But that sight is nowhere near as dreadful as the monster he faces.
“Taar!” I whisper, my voice half-strangled with broken song.
His veins bulge with pulsing black malice. Virulium tears pour from his eyes, and bile drips from his open jaw. A grotesque thing, almost unrecognizable as the man I once loved. But I recognize him—I’ve seen this aspect of him before.
I’m too late.The words pound inside my head like the drums of doom.He’s gone. He’s lost to this darkness and, this time, he won’t return.
I called him back once before, but that was when my song was fresh and unharmed, and I’d joined it with Elydark’s voice, creating new harmonies such as I’d never before known. It wasn’t this broken melody, so deeply-rooted into my soul. This dissonance that has become an inextricable part of my being.
The futility of what I must do nearly overwhelms whatever courage I have left. Perhaps if I still loved him—loved him without restraint, my soul joined with his in glorious unity—then I might pull him back. But if I loved him, he wouldn’t have done this. He wouldn’t have gone this far, wouldn’t have thrown himself into the embrace of damnation.
I’ve got to try. I’ve got to remember that love I once knew and somehow call him back.
Elydark, struggling to shake off the chaeora net, cries out feebly:Save him! Save my Vellar!
Gripping Lathaira’s massive sword with both hands, I run towardthe battle, just as the Shadow King and Taar come together once more. The troll is unarmed, but he strikes Taar in the chest with both hands and sends him hurtling through the air, creating some distance between them. Taar hits the ground, rolls, but pulls himself back together unscathed. Whirling like a panther, he gathers himself for a spring.
Heart pounding with a dark pulse of warsong, I throw myself into that little space of ground between the two of them. “Taar!” I shout.“No!”
In the same breath, I grab whatever remains of the true song deep inside me, send it streaking toward him in a beam of pure songlight. Thin and fragile, but truly aimed, a bolt of gods-gifted power. It shoots through his mind, down to his heart. Down beneath the pulsing un-song that threatens to undo everything once shared between us.
For an instant, I hear him. Hear the song of his heart, true and bright. A heaven-sent melody, twining with that fragile voice of mine. A harmony meant to last for eternity.
A surge of un-song ripples back through the little thread, striking me hard. I gasp, stagger back—and only just have enough awareness to realize Taar himself is bearing down on me, sword upraised. He covers the space between us in three long strides. Hisvaritargleaming, he brings the blade hacking down at my skull. I manage to get Lathaira’s sword up in defense, the way Tassa taught me. Taar moves too fast. His next blow comes at my side. I parry,my muscles remembering what my mind cannot, warding off a blow that would have hewn through my neck.
