Lion warrior, p.34
Lion Warrior, page 34
More arrows passed over them, not flying at the dark creatures but at Vorax himself. Some plinked harmlessly off the dragon’s broad scarlet scales, but those that passed through the light from the dagger sank deep.
Vorax screamed. “Faithless, I name you! Will you squander the last hope of your people? Vanquish me to save your skin, and you’ll never defeat Heleyor!”
The last hope of his people. How long had the Keledan hoarded the last remnant of their celestium? What had their fear of losing it cost? If Zel was right, the Huckleheim miners had caused this breach in their relentless search for more.
Dag’s twin axes sparked off pyranium armor well to Connor’s left. “Don’t listen! The Assembly and my forefathers put their hope in the Maker’s gift instead of in the Maker himself!”
Faithless the Keledan had been in hoarding the Rescuer’s provision, in failing to use his gift. Connor lifted his voice to Elamhavar. “Is this what you want? Is this my time?”
Trust me now. Use what I’ve given you. See what happens next.
With the answer came a verse from the Scrolls. Connor shouted it at the dragon. “Sho’ema’ovu Premornesh ge’avond gelalim tresolothod onormath fi ke’Rumosh.”
He will provide all your needs according to his riches in glory in his son.
“Whatever he has in store”—Kara kicked a frost goblin away and slashed at an iceblade with her scimitar—“whether death or peace, or the ending of this world, we’re with you, and the Rescuer is with us all!”
“I trust him!” Connor shouted, not to her but at the dragon, as if the words were a spear. “My hope is in the Rescuer alone!”
Vorax convulsed and cried out. Black flames leaked from the dragon’s wounds, welling up inside its body. Lashoroth wheeled about the dragon’s head on gleaming blue, white, and gold wings and spat streams of frost mixed with gray ether.
Pedrig and Ioanu leapt against the monster. The wolf, forest-green armor as solid as Connor’s, latched on to its wing. The bear, in blue armor, dug her teeth and claws into its leg.
Thasyr galloped in from the mine cart tunnel, silver-white armor gleaming with its gold flourishes, and bounded off the side of the chamber to tear into the dragon’s neck. His voice came to Connor’s mind. Now, son of faith. Use the Rescuer’s gift.
All others who’d spent the celestium had died in its use. If that was the Rescuer’s will for Connor, so be it.
Connor set his jaw and charged, struck an orc down with his crook, and hurled Lef Amunrel at their enemy.
The dagger sank into the dragon’s chest until nothing but the ruby starlot in its hilt showed, a match to the surrounding scales.
Vorax shook, red eyes glowing. Within the reptile flesh, a ghostly form took shape—akin to a Lisropha but with broken wings and twisted limbs bound by the white-and-gray frost of the lashoroth. The face, in agony, bore the gargoyle likeness of the orcs.
Pedrig, Ioanu, and Thasyr released the monster and retreated. The lion roared, “Get back!”
Before the Havarra reached the paradragons and lightraiders, the dragon became a flash of blinding pink. A wind stronger than the wind he’d faced in Ras Pyras rushed over Connor, knocking him and his friends to the floor.
An instant later, the wind and the flash were gone. Connor’s ears rang. Darkness had closed utterly around him.
“Kara?”
“I’m here.”
He heard steel on flint, and three lanterns glowed to life. Master Jairun, Baldomar, and Tiran held their lights high.
Vorax had vanished. So had his dark creatures, both living and dead. None but the Keledan, the Havarra, and the fluttering lashoroth remained.
Baldomar held his lantern close to the wall. “Look what he’s done.” The tunnel leading into Tanelethar was closed, filled with the glistening white core of the mountains. The rest of the chamber walls and ceiling seemed like a midnight sky full of twinkling stars. Baldomar laughed. “Celestium. Look at all the Rescuer has provided.”
Kara struck her own lantern and immediately gasped in horror. She clapped a hand to her mouth. Tears sprang to her eyes. “Connor! Your leg!”
He sat up and stilled her fright with a calming hand. “I know. It’s all right.” Thasyr bent near him, and with the lion and Kara’s help, he stood. “I’m alive. What more can I be than grateful and content? Whatever the Rescuer has in store, I’ll walk in faith.”
80
TEEGAN
TANELETHAR
BRIMSTONE HEIGHTS
The Airguard fleet closed over the Aladoth army. “We can’t kill them,” Teegan said to Boreas. “That’s not our calling.”
“Then tell me how to close this portal.”
With a great and thunderous clap, lightning shot up from the black smoke circle to touch the sky. A ring of matching light spread across the tar lake, and in its wake, it left black rock, as smooth as polished granite.
The ships cracked, split by this rock where their hulls met the surface. The wooden docks broke and collapsed. Aladoth fled to the shore.
In the place the lightning struck, a tree sprang up, made of the same black stone. Jeweled orange and yellow leaves sprouted from its spreading branches. A hollow opened in its broad trunk, and from within, Teegan saw a warm and welcoming light.
“What does it mean?” Boreas asked.
Teegan smiled. “I’d say it means we won.”
Below their ship, the windfighters killed the last of the orcs and goblins while many of the Aladoth and barkhides fled into the mountains. Many more Aladoth stayed and dropped to their knees. Hundreds lifted their heads and fixed their eyes on the flagship.
Teegan inched away from the councilor, whispering, “This is what you were meant for. This is why he gave you your voice.”
Boreas nodded, drew a breath, and began. Verse by verse, meaning by meaning, he shared with them the Great Rescue.
Even after the power they’d witnessed, some refused to believe, and they wandered away grumbling and arguing among themselves. But many did believe and cried out for forgiveness to the Rescuer, and the windfighters guided them to the new hollow tree at the center of the black lake.
EPILOGUE
CONNOR
KELEDEV
RAS TELESAR
GRADUATION DAY
Master Jairun stood at the fourth-level ramparts, with Connor and his class behind him and the waterfalls of the chapel Nevethav flowing above. “What an auspicious and hope-filled day this is—the first graduation day at Lightraider Academy after the Order’s long dormancy.”
Connor squirmed a bit, trying not to show it. They’d been standing up there a while, and he still hadn’t grown used to the talanium foot Baldomar and Belen had fashioned for him. Lee gave him weekly treatments of balm, but the stump still itched.
Stop fidgeting, Faith Walker, he heard in his mind and glanced at Thasyr, who stood at his side. The lion lifted his nose—a motion for Connor to keep his eyes forward.
Thasyr was not the only one to call him Faith Walker. Lef Amunrel was gone. To the one who’d spent it, standing on faith alone, many in Keledev had given its name.
Among the crowd watching from the third-level ramparts were several more of Lee’s and Master Jairun’s patients who’d also lost limbs, all wearing Baldomar and Belen’s inventions where a hand, arm, foot, or leg had been. Some were watchmen. Most were cadets—two of whom had fallen under the goblin flood in the breach tunnel and yet survived. Not all who’d fallen to that flood had fared so well.
Much had passed since the Rescuer had closed the breach under his mountains. With the consent of Connor’s class, the headmaster had delayed their graduation until the first day of summer, thus giving Keledev time to mourn the fallen and celebrate their passing to Elamhavar.
They also celebrated the coming of hundreds of new Keledan. These had sprung like fields of morning glories all at once from the Passage Lakes, much to the fright—and then joy—of the cadets manning the fireglass tower there. Only by the word of the escorting windfighters did they know that the battle was won and these newcomers were not invaders.
On both sides of the cadet class stood the guardians. This also was a reason for the delay. Master Quinton needed many weeks to heal before he could stand again. He’d taken an iceblade’s lance to the chest, almost as Connor saw in the dragon’s vision, but not quite. The lance had struck nearer to the swordmaster’s shoulder than his heart. His arm still hung in a sling wrapped about his middle. But Master Jairun and Lee both said he’d regain full use one day—just not any day soon. For Connor and his friends, it was enough that their beloved swordmaster could stand with them that day.
Dag stood nearest to Quinton, as a member of his sphere and the apprentice who would ease the burden of the swordmaster’s work. According to Master Jairun, Dag’s dedication to new recruits had shown his true calling.
Dag’s family had ridden up from Huckleheim. They watched from the level below with Baldomar’s relatives. In the ticks before the ceremony, Connor had heard them grumbling about the celestium. The Rescuer had restored this incredible ore to the Celestial Peaks, and the miners had found dozens of veins. But the Assembly forbade them from digging it up.
Many councilors, Stradok included, laid the fault for the breach on the Huckleheim miners’ shoulders, forgetting that it was the Assembly who’d hoarded the last weapon and sent them looking for more celestium ore in the first place. After all they’d suffered—after years of battle inside Keledev brought on by their refusal to trust in the Rescuer’s provision—the Assembly was still the Assembly. The celestium remained locked in the mountains, waiting on endless debates.
Would they never learn?
Connor hoped he had learned. One lesson was given to him by Master Jairun in the moments after Vorax was destroyed. The headmaster had looked down on his wounded leg with great pity and known without asking what Connor had tried to do.
Speaking before the academy and the families of the guardians and cadets, Master Jairun repeated that lesson now. “If these hard years have taught us anything, I hope it has reinforced our faithfulness to the Rescuer’s commission. We know our mission without question, and that mission is not to storm Heleyor’s gates. Let the Rescuer himself choose the timing of the Great Red Dragon’s destruction.”
Connor was grateful the guardian didn’t fix him with a stare as he said this.
“Let us instead storm the Dragon Lands,” Master Jairun said, “and rescue the lost. Again, the Rescuer showed us this path. By his grace, in the final battle at Brimstone Heights, he turned the tragedy of the breach into the victory of hundreds saved.”
As if in answer, Connor heard a sharp bark from among the onlookers. Koteg stood with his muzzle held high at Sireth Yar’s side. His mistress remained in Tanelethar, unable to leave her post for long without raising suspicion. But, with Teegan’s help, Thera had trained Koteg as a go-between to carry messages. Thera’s risk brought them vital news from the important city of Emen Yan, such as the rumors drifting among the Fulcor nobles that a new stronghold was being built near the center of Val Glasa—an isolated crag of rock and ice governed by a bitter dragon lord oozing slime from its scales.
A smile crossed Connor’s lips, and he resisted the urge to glance at Pedrig, standing a pace behind the headmaster. The wolf’s own work bringing messages across the barrier seemed so long ago. Yet, the sight of it had served as a quickening at the start of Connor’s lightraider journey.
Master Jairun turned halfway and stepped back beside Pedrig to gesture with his wooden staff at the cadet scouts. “These six, the first class of the restored Lightraider Academy, played more than an integral part in that victory at Brimstone Heights.” He laid his staff across his arm and clapped his hands.
As their families applauded, Connor stole a glance down the row at his friends.
Kara’s blue-gray flourishes brightened, on full display with no coverings at her hands and her hair tied back. Ioanu’s bearish lips seemed to smile beside her.
Tiran and Teegan, with Aethia on her arm, remained stolid, acting as good soldiers should. Lee tried to do the same, but he puffed his chest, much like he had on the day he and Connor had first met.
A tear rolled down Dag’s cheek. He sniffed.
The applause settled, and Master Jairun raised his staff, addressing the cadets. “You have one last task in your studies. A recitation. Speak it together, and for once, I’ll let you speak it in the Common Tongue. Say for me and for these gathered here the Lightraider’s Prayer.”
With smiles, the cadets joined their voices together. The guardians and Ioanu, Pedrig, and Thasyr spoke it with them.
“The night is nearly over, and the day is near. So let us discard the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light!”
A gift of light from the Rescuer shone over them, falling from the chapel Nevethav’s many-colored windows. The itch in Connor’s stump left him, and glancing down, he saw a silver-white boot. Every cadet’s armor glowed, as sure and solid as the armor in the painting of Connor’s patehpa over his tehpa’s hearth in Stonyvale—Connor in silver white, Kara in indigo, Teegan and Tiran in sea green, Lee in red, and Dag in bronze. Pedrig’s, Ioanu’s, and Thasyr’s armor glowed to life as well. All were decorated with gold and silver scrollwork, remembrances of their battles and rescues.
Master Jairun tamped his staff loudly on the stones, unable to quell the onlookers’ cheers. He shouted over their praise, “Well done, all. You are now scout reliants, the first rank in the Order. Congratulations on your graduation from Lightraider Academy!”
END
APPENDIX
NAMES
INDIVIDUALS AND FAMILIES
Advor (ĂD-vohr)
Advoran (ĂD-vohr-ən)
Aethia (Ā-thē-ə)
Arkelon (AHRK-ĕ-lahn)
Arkelian (ahr-KĔ-lē-ən)
Baldomar (BAHL-dō-mahr)
Belen (BĀ-lĕn)
Berothan (BEH-rŏth-ən)
Berothor (BEH-rŏth-ohr)
Bordu (BOHR-dū)
Boreas (BOHR-ē-əs)
Cresian (CREH-sē-ən)
Creson (CREH-sahn)
Enarian (En-ĀR-ē-ən)
Fulcor (FULL-kohr)
Fulcan (FULL-kən)
Ilmari (Il-MAHR-ē)
Ingaru (Ēn-GAHR-ū)
Ioanu (Eye-Ō-ə-nū)
Jairun (JEYE-rūn)
Kaivos (KEYE-vahs)
Keir (KEYR)
Leander (Lē-AN-dĕr)
Orso (OHR-sō)
Quinton (KWIN-tən)
Ralian (RĂ-lē-ən)
Ralon (RĂ-lahn)
Rumosh (RŪ-mŏsh) [Exalted One]
Samar (Sə-MAHR)
Silvana (Sil-VAH-nə)
Suvan (SŪ-vən)
Suvor (SŪ-vohr)
Tarlan (TAHR-lən)
Tarlor (TAHR-lohr)
Teegan (TĒ-gən)
Tiran (TĒ-rən)
Yar (Yahr)
Zayan (ZEYE-yən)
Zayor (ZEYE-yohr)
LOCATIONS
KELEDEV (KĔ-LĔ-DĔV)
The Anamturas (Ăn-əm-TOOR-əs) – The primary river of Keledev, meaning the Soul’s Journey. It descends from the Celestial Peaks and empties into Val Ratavel at Sky Harbor.
The Celestial Peaks – A barrier formed by a massive mountain range. Three days after a horde of dragons spent all their fire to vanquish him, the Rescuer returned, raising these impossibly high peaks. Together with the Storm Mists, the Celestial Peaks protect the peninsula of Keledev, the Liberated Land, so that the Rescuer’s followers will never be subject to the dragon’s wrath again.
The Central Plain – South of the Dayspring Highlands and the five vales. North of the White Ridge Mountains. These are the main grasslands and the agricultural center of Keledev. Much to the frustration of the Sky Harbor Cartographers’ Guild, the towns on the northern fringe prefer to divide the region further into the Central Plain and the Northern Plains. Maps from these towns often make no mention of the Central Plain.
The Clefts of Semajin – A network of clefts northeast of the academy. The colossal main fissure of these clefts on the upper slopes of the Celestial Peaks looks narrow because of its great height, but its base is far wider than the whole of Lightraider Academy. The interior shadow of this fissure hides a network of smaller clefts and caves. It is in the highest of these caves, in windswept caverns open to the interior of the clefts, that pale blue snowflowers grow—a powerful medicinal gift from the Rescuer. Some say that ancient ice-breathing lashoroth (paradragons) guard these flowers.
Dayspring Highlands – High terrain meeting the foothills at the southern base of the Celestial Peaks. The highlands descend to the south into the rolling hills and dells on the northern border of the Central Plain. Dayspring Forest covers much of the Dayspring Highlands with pines, chestnuts, oaks, and elms.
The Eastern Hills – Stepped hills covered in grain fields at the southeast extent of the Central Plain.
“The five vales” – A colloquial term for the valley towns in the southern portion of the Dayspring Highlands. Spread among the grassy hills at the northern edge of what some call the Northern Plains, the five vales are shepherding and farming villages. Pleasanton, in Pleasant Vale, is the most populous town in the vales and the region’s center of trade, but it is by no means the largest in terms of land.
The Gathering – A small river whose source is the hot spring within the chapel Nevethav at Lightraider Academy. It joins the Anamturas north of Ravencrest.
The Gulf of Stars – A gulf on the western edge of Keledev, separating the Keledan coast from the Westlings. The Storm Mists hang in this gulf as a barrier between Keledev and Tanelethar.
The Gulf of Vows – A gulf on the west side of Keledev, separating the Keledan coast from the Desert of Sin and the Eastlings in Tanelethar. The Storm Mists hang in this gulf as a barrier.
