Shadow War - Deborah Chester [47]
They splashed through the warm stream, and a little ray of hope lifted in Caelan. Better than halfway to the main road now. He did not think reaching it would save them, but at least it meant they would be off the mountain, in the clear, and on better defended ground. They would make it to the road, he told himself, and there they would fight.
The scream rent the air, right on top of them, so startling, so unworldly that Caelan cried out with it. His heart was pounding as though it would burst. He was out of breath, out of strength. Sweat poured off him in a river. His sword weighed a thousand pounds, and he was too weak, too spent from running to lift it.
Caelan severed, leaving his weariness behind. A part of him knew he was taking a risk, severing so close to the prince. Tirhin might suspect his secret, yet what did it matter right now? Surviving was more important than anything else.
Whirling with all the speed he was famous for, Caelan lifted his torch aloft, just in time to ward off the creature rushing at him.
It was a wind spirit, he thought, feeling fear return. Yet the detachment and heightened awareness of severance was already telling him differently. The shyrieas swirled and circled about them, long misty entities half seen in the darkness. Some seemed to have the faces of women; others were too fearsome to describe. They shrieked, and the sound was horrible enough to drive a man mad. Caelan heard Tirhin scream.
The prince dropped to his knees, and in a flash the shyrieas were on him, swarming in silent flight, rending with claws and teeth.
Caelan waded into them, feeling as though his skin was being sanded away. His clothes billowed in the wind of their passing. He felt the cloth tearing into shreds. His sword passed through them without effect, but everywhere the torch touched, a shyriea screamed and shied back.
Grimly Caelan could think of only one thing to do. He focused on his torch flame and shifted to sevaisin, joining himself to the flame, becoming flame, becoming heat.
Fire shot down the length of the torch and along his arms. He screamed in the flames as they consumed him, yet when he opened his mouth, fire burst from him and blazed across the shyrieas. They parted in a frenzy, melting and dissolving as the flames drove them back.
Caelan’s hair and clothes were on fire. Flames shot from his fingertips, from his eyes, from his open mouth. He could not stop it, could not control it. He was burning in the fire, dying in it even as the spirits were dying.
He felt the earth scorching his feet as though he were drawing fire from what seethed below its surface. From far away, he heard a rumble that grew in volume as though the whole mountain stirred.
Then from the top of Sidraigh-hal behind them, molten lava spewed forth a shower of red and gold. The rumbling grew more violent, shaking Caelan off his feet.
The fire in him went out, and somehow he was able to reach for severance. It snapped the last connection, and he was free, blessedly free, back in the icy safety of nowhere at all.
“The void,” he mumbled, and lost consciousness.
* * *
He awakened in the cold grayness of dawn to find himself sprawled on the ground while a fine mist of rain fell on him. His clothing was sodden and plastered to his skin. Across the canyon, the mountain still belched smoke, indistinguishable from the mist at this distance. The air smelled of sulfur and wet ashes.
Caelan groaned and managed to roll over until he could sit up. His clothes hung on him in filthy tatters. His hands were streaked black with soot and grime. His hair smelled as though it had been singed. Still, as bad as he felt, he could have been dead. He should have been dead.
His amulet pouch swung heavily against his chest. He held it a moment for comfort, then frowned. It felt wrong. With sudden foreboding, he shook the contents onto his palm. Before, he had had two small emeralds. Now they were fused together into a larger whole, as though somehow they had grown. He