The tide of unmaking, p.28
The Tide of Unmaking, page 28
part #3 of Berinfell Prophesies Series
“Take my hand,” Charlie whispered, reaching backward. “We can’t afford to get separated.”
It took Miss Finney a few seconds to find his hand but, when she did, she gripped it tightly.
Charlie took the left-hand opening and proceeded cautiously. Just past the threshold of the corridor, Charlie stopped hard, and Fin ran into his back. He had come just a few steps from falling some twenty feet to the floor of a circular chamber where several Drefid soldiers stood guard. The near fall had been a close thing, but what took Charlie’s breath away was the light source.
There must have been twenty or more active portals in the chamber. There came an electrical snap, and one of the portals collapsed. It reopened moments later.
“We need to go,” Charlie whispered.
“Why?” Fin asked. “Don’t you want to—”
“Now,” Charlie said. “We need to get back. If this is what I think it is, it could save the Lords a lot of time. It might even save Allyra.”
They turned and moved hastily back the way they had come. This time, they marched up the never ending slope. That’s when Charlie thought he heard something. It was a grinding noise with a heavy, intermittent clank of metal.
“Oh, no,” Charlie hissed. “We’re going to have to run for it. If we lose each other, meet at the pines. We have to run.”
“What? Why?”
“The portcullis,” he said, and then all she heard were his heavy footfalls.
Charlie saw light up ahead, and it was natural light. The sun had crested the horizon when they were down below. He sped up, trying desperately to keep his steps silent. It might have been due to his own pulse pounding in his ears, but he didn’t hear Fin behind him.
Up and up he ran. His heart sank when he finally caught sight of the heavy iron gate. He’d hoped it was on its way up. It wasn’t. It was a mere four feet from sealing off any hope of escape.
Still yards away, Charlie clutched his tool satchel to his chest and sprinted. He felt sure the Drefids would hear his passing now, but he had no choice. He ran till he thought his heart would burst from his chest. Just a few yards away now, but the portcullis crept inexorably down.
Charlie careened toward the falling gate, dove and rolled under the sharp metal barbs. He’d done it. He was free. But what about Fin?
He looked back, heard a brief scraping sound and the portcullis slammed into the ground. Charlie was about to despair when something brushed by his shoulder. Fin!
Charlie poured it on, dodging Drefids and ducking swiftly between the massive ashen trees that stood sentry on the border of the Coven. Finally, the last leg. He chugged along, hopped a border of rock, and tap danced among the thick, knobby roots of yet another towering gray tree. He came to the ridge and half slid, half skidded down the slope to the pines.
“I thought you’d never get here!” Regis said, her voice drifting out between two trees. “Who are you?”
“It’s Charlie,” he said. “Fin isn’t here yet?”
They heard a clattering from up above. A stream of pebbles came toppling down the slope.
“Fin,” Charlie called. As he stared, he saw something very strange. A few feet above the ridge, a brown smudge was hovering. No, it was more than a smudge. It had a right angle, was maybe rectangular.
The book.
It had to be. The book Fin had taken from the Drefids.
“Fin, get down here!” Charlie called. “You’re becoming visible!”
“Hold on,” Miss Finney called down. “Let me put this book—uhgh!”
A massive gnarled gray hand closed where the book was becoming visible. Blood spilled over the twisted fingers and began to show the form of Fin’s legs.
“NO!” Charlie yelled, already bounding up the slope and tearing at the zipper on his satchel.
Suddenly Fin’s blood-spattered form was lifted into the air. The towering gray tree. It was a Cragon, larger and stronger than any Charlie had seen before.
Fin screamed again and again. “Charlie!”
Driven by dire need, Charlie bounded up to the rim. He had his best battle axe loose from the satchel and slammed it into the Cragon’s base. A hunk of gray wood tore free with a gout of black blood. “Let her go, you misbegotten—”
“Char—Charlie,” came Fin’s voice, garbled and half-choked. “T-take…the book.”
The Cragon’s roar sounded like splintered thunder, but Charlie didn’t flinch. He hacked away at the creature.
“Charlie, no!” Regis yelled from behind. “That thing will bring the whole Coven down on us. Let me shoot its eyes!”
“DO IT!” Charlie yelled. He turned and ducked the Cragon’s ill-aimed swipe. But as he came up, he saw.
He saw a blood streaked form in the Cragon’s hand. Fin was slumped over and barely held on to the book.
“I…I’m done, Charlie,” she said, dropping the book. It hit the ridge and began sliding down the hill.
“No!” Charlie bellowed. He slung his axe and drew two daggers. Just as Regis fired the first arrow into the Cragon’s eye, Charlie leaped up onto the base of the creature’s trunk. He plunged the daggers in and used them to climb.
The Cragon wheeled about like mad and yanked the arrow out of its eye. But it was no good. The eye gushed a greenish sludge. It was ruined. Regis’ second arrow took the other eye.
Charlie climbed the swaying creature until he got to its knobby shoulder. He tossed the dagger in his right hand and grabbed his axe. He straddled his legs around the trunk and swung the axe one-handed at the shoulder joint. “You will not have her!” he cried. He hacked away until he saw the arm begin to tremble. It was losing strength. Charlie gave it one more savage blow and then leaped to the ground.
The arm-limb went limp. The hand opened, and Fin dropped.
Charlie caught her. “Fin!” he called. “Fin! Come on, Fin! Answer me, you no-good Sentinel!”
“Endurance…” she whispered. But that was all.
A sudden clamor from behind forced Charlie to blink his tears away. The Drefids were coming, and it sounded like a lot of them.
Charlie pounded down the slope. “The raptors?” he called.
“Twenty yards past the pines!” Regis yelled.
“The book!” Charlie yelled over his shoulder. “Fin’s book—”
“Got it!” Regis yelled.
Charlie burst through the pines and loped to the first Scarlet Raptor. He eased Miss Finney up so that she lay across the front of the saddle. He leaped up himself and gave the raptor a swift kick.
As the first arrows came streaking in from the Drefids, Charlie was airborne. He saw Regis’ raptor take to the air, Fin’s raptor right behind.
Suddenly, a searing pain struck Charlie’s thigh. A Drefid had leaped up and was trying to spear the raptor. Charlie summoned every bit of might and rage he had and bludgeoned the Drefid’s face with his fist. The thing gurgled and fell away.
In the air, Charlie noted that the Gnomic paste was slowly wearing off. Miss Finney’s face was becoming visible, a peaceful, pale portrait suspended forever in sleep. “Don’t you worry, Fin,” Charlie whispered. “We’re coming back to this place. We’re going to take them down. We’re going to take them all down.”
28: Chamber of Portals
“THAT COVEN IS GOING TO burn,” Johnny said, his voice sounding gravelly and thin, spoken through gritted teeth. White-hot tongues of flame trembled in his palms and cast flickering shadows on the inner walls of the Justice Tree.
“Careful,” Autumn said, rubbing his shoulder. “Keep your head.”
“No, he’s right,” Jimmy said, the words deep and menacing. “I don’na need to see the future to know that.” He buried his face in his hands, but tears found their way through his fingers. Regis gathered him in close and they wept together silently.
“When do we depart?” Taeva asked.
“Yesterday,” Tommy replied. “Migmar, please have your Leaf Guard load the remaining invisibility paste on our raptors. We leave the moment they’re ready.”
“Do, I will, as you say,” Migmar replied. “Wish you the Leaf Guard to come with you…fight the Coven?”
“No,” Tommy replied. “I won’t put them at risk. No one else dies today…except the enemy.”
Regis looked up. “What about Grimwarden and Goldarrow?” she asked. “The portals…?”
“I’ll send word,” Tommy replied. “If the portals can get us to Asp faster…we’re going to take them. Grimwarden and Goldarrow need to know we won’t be coming back to Berinfell first. They need to know about the Vulrid and the Dark Arts. And…” His voice cracked. “And…Miss Finney needs to return to Berinfell. Migmar, please?”
“Bear her and your correspondence with honor,” Migmar said. “Send Thorkber and Sarabell, I will, for coming I am with you.”
“Thank you,” Tommy whispered.
“The Drefids know we were there,” Charlie said. “They’ll bolster their defenses. They might bring troops in through the portals. They’ll be ready.”
“Aye,” Jast said. “They will prepare a bloody welcome.”
Bengfist stood and hefted his hammer. As he strode from the chamber, he said, “It will not matter how many they are or what they do to prepare. They will never be ready enough for us.”
The flight was grueling, both for the raptors and their pilots. They landed about a mile down slope from the Coven, allowed a precious few minutes for rest, and went over the battle plans and objectives.
“Remember,” Tommy said, “this is not about avenging our friend. This is not mindless slaughter or lust for blood. If that is why we fight, then we have lost our way and become like our enemy.” Tommy’s eyes fell gently on Jimmy and then Johnny. “We fight,” Tommy went on, “so that Allyra and Earth can survive. If we gain access to those portals, perhaps we can stop the Tide of Unmaking. Perhaps, those we love in both worlds, can know a life of peace. This is why we fight.”
Their company of eleven traded solemn nods.
“Well,” Mr. Charlie said, “we best paste up. Stuff takes a little while to make us disappear.”
“We won’t be using the paste for this,” Tommy said.
“We won’t?” Kat asked. “Tommy…”
“We have no idea how much of it we’ll need on Earth,” Tommy said. “And besides, I want this Coven of Drefids to see us. I want them to see the combined might of the Elves, Gwar, Saer, Gnomes and Taladrim—the might of Ellos, whom the enemy profanes. No, let them see the grim resolve in our faces. And let them tremble.”
Tommy and Kiri Lee flew side-by-side. They came at the Coven out of the sun and swooped down toward the tallest structure, a turreted stone building near the center of the Coven territory. Still some fifty feet above the turret, they both leaped from their raptors. Tommy clung to Kiri Lee as she airwalked to the turret.
The surprised Drefid there didn’t have time to shriek. Kiri Lee’s lightning-fast side kick laid the creature flat. She pounced and finished it with a dagger. With a brief salute, she was gone, leaving Tommy with the high ground to himself. That’s when the noise started.
Johnny and Taeva had been tasked with blasting all the trees. And they carried out their plans with great zeal. Cragons roared and screeched, clawing at the sky in vain as Johnny loosed streams of fire upon them. He drove his raptor on an erratic path that allowed him to keep an eye on the ground. Leaping Drefids couldn’t reach Johnny, but arc rifles could. In blurred glimpses, Johnny had seen Drefid soldiers marching in packs or clumping in large groups near certain buildings, but he’d not heard any arc rifle fire. He wondered why, but flew on.
Moments later, Johnny found out why…the hard way. After tossing fire into the upper boughs of a dark gray Cragon, Johnny banked his raptor away, hard to the right. He heard a strange muffled WHUMP. Suddenly, something flared brightly in his peripheral vision. He yanked the reins hard to the left. Whatever it was turned the air blistering hot as it passed, and Johnny covered his eyes with his hands. Still, the image burned through his fingers. It was as if a comet had nearly struck him. Johnny blinked and tried to see. That’s when it exploded.
A pressure wave surged outward, and Johnny’s raptor screeched and tumbled wildly in the air. Johnny held on until the raptor righted itself and then turned back and forth in the saddle, trying to see what had fired at him. It had been like an arc stone—only fifty times larger. It was like an arc cannon.
Just as that thought entered his mind, he saw Drefids leaving a long stone building. They left in a hurry but were hunched over. Johnny flew closer and realized they were working in teams of three, rolling very large, dark blue stones as fast as they could. Some went into other buildings. Others went under hastily-built wooden structures covered by tarps. The wind blew up one edge. That’s when Johnny saw.
Beneath the tarp was an ominous-looking gray, metallic tube with heavy wheels on either side. Drefids buzzed around it like bees, pouring some luminous liquid into the tube. This they followed by dumping a sack of some sort of powder. Johnny had to loop around to keep watching. He saw that the Drefids struck one of the huge round stones. Sparks kindled, and the Drefids hoisted the stone into the tube.
Dear Ellos! Johnny thought. They do have an arc stone cannon! Johnny didn’t hesitate. He pulled up his hottest flame and launched it at the Drefid weapon. Johnny pulled up just in time to avoid the shockwave from the enclosure’s explosion, but a hot vapor-wind still nearly managed to knock him from his seat. He shook all over but finally regained his composure. The raptor screeched unhappily.
“Sorry!” Johnny said. “I won’t get you that close again, I promise.” He banked the raptor hard to the left, directing the raptor in the general direction he thought Kat might be.
Kat, you listening? Johnny thought, furrowing his brow as if that might help broadcast his thoughts.
“Here,” she said.
Tell the team, Johnny told her. The Drefids have arc stone cannons. Seriously, big ole guns. Steer wide around any shots while airborne. Hit ‘em while they’re on the ground.
“Got it,” she replied. A heartbeat later, Kat broadcasted the message.
One of the largest Cragons Johnny had ever seen reared up suddenly on the Coven’s west ridge. It had only one working arm, but it was so tall that Johnny had to take his raptor much higher. He turned in his saddle and was about to unleash a fiery blast when he heard a familiar voice from far below.
“No, Johnny! Don’na yu do that!” Jimmy yelled. “This one’s mine!”
The Cragon took a swipe at Jimmy, but Jimmy had seen it before it happened. He was already moving. He unslung his claymore and began to hack away at the wound Mr. Charlie had begun. Regis joined, chopping at the side directly opposite of Jimmy. They chopped at the base. They chopped at the grasping roots. It was a flurry of sharp steel. Chunks of gnarled flesh flew, and viscous black blood pooled.
Drefids tried to intervene, but Taeva’s lightning blasts ruined any that came within a twenty foot radius of Jimmy and Regis.
The Cragon let out a hideous reverberating wail, but it was cut short. “That’s for murdering our friend,” Jimmy said as he and Regis cut through. The lifeless Cragon fell, and it seemed for a moment that the Coven had gone silent. Drefids scurried to get out of the fall zone. A few could not escape in time. The Cragon slammed into the ground, crushing all beneath it. Taeva weaved electricity from the air and fired two wild streaks at the dead Cragon. The roar of the battle rushed back in like a collapsing wave.
In less than half an hour, every Cragon was either burning and dying…or dead and reduced to cinder. In between a storm of arrows, Tommy watched it all unfold just as they’d planned it. He wondered if Kat had taken position on the bluff overlooking the Coven. He figured he should have heard something if she—
“Company of Ellos,” Kat’s voice spoke into his mind. “Cragons are down. Time to bring in the infantry. Watch for the Drefids’ new arc cannon, and call out for air support. Johnny, Kiri Lee, Taeva: be ready to bring it from above.”
Like ants in a suddenly exposed nest, Drefids scurried to sure up their defenses. They had expected the Elves to come back, but they weren’t prepared for all the Lords of Berinfell and champions from three other races.
Mr. Charlie led Jimmy, Regis, Migmar, Jast and Bengfist in a charge from east to west.
The Drefids tried to leap over their charge to flank the intruders. But Johnny, Kiri Lee and Taeva were waiting above. No Drefid that leaped into the air returned to the ground alive. Charlie and the rest streamed around the bleeding and burning Drefid corpses and raced onward.
Bengfist was a one-Gwar wrecking crew. Ignoring blade, shaft, and talon, Bengfist bowled into the Drefids streaming out from one of their stone buildings. His hammer swept up and connected hard. Drefids flew bodily into the air and crashed in heaps. One Drefid leaped down from a building, trying to impale Bengfist on its talons. But the wily Gwar darted forward, spun and swung his warhammer. It connected just as the Drefid landed. The crushing blow filled the air with the crackling sounds of shattering bones. The Drefid became unhinged and, like a marionette whose strings had been cut, it spun away in an awkward jumble.
Migmar and Jastansia discovered that they worked well together. With the Gnome a safe distance behind her, Jast took two Drefids at a time, whirling her shardstave relentlessly in a dizzying array of strikes and counters. One Drefid lost its sword. The other had its talons cracked. But before they realized they’d been disarmed, the Drefids found their feet swept out from under them, and a maniacal, thwack-hammer wielding Gnome pouncing for the kill.
With fire, lightning and lethally aimed arrows covering them from above, Mr. Charlie and his team advanced across the Coven. The Drefids began to retreat. But when they came to one of the taller buildings in the center of the Coven, they made a stand.
