Windwalker - Elaine Cunningham [136]
Power flowed from the witches into the singing berserkers. The rage came over them swiftly. Fyodor was the first to throw down his sword and rear up on two strong, black-furred legs. A blue-eyed bear roared into the thick of battle, tossing aside zombies and living drow alike with swipes of his massive paws. Petyar changed, and a long-limbed brown bear galloped toward a beleaguered Rashemi. The clatter of Rashemaar swords against stone echoed through the clearing as one after another the men dropped their weapons and took on their true berserker forms. Before long every man of the Black Bear lodge fought with the form and fury of his totem animal.
In some corner of her mind, Liriel was aware of Sharlarra darting through the battlefield, collecting the discarded weapons. These she took to the edge of the battlefield where grim-faced women took up swords their husbands and brothers had dropped, and children stood waiting to leave childhood behind forever. The elf handed out the weapons, and all Rashemi who could hold a blade went to fight beside their berserkers.
The drow reached out to Thorn, felt the powerful dual nature of the elf-wolf-and a depth of pain she would not have thought the stoic hunter capable of feeling. A lone voice, a wolf's plaintive howl, rose to the moon in unwilling solo. With all her heart, with all her being, the exiled hunter longed for a pack.
Liriel brought to mind the sundering of the tapestry and the healing circle of ravens that had guided the spirits of the captive elves home. Little raven, she thought. Fyodor had named her well. Following the example of her namesakes in this world and the one beyond, Liriel called the wolves.
With one voice, the witches and drow sent Thorn's plaintive wolf-song out into the surrounding mountains. Lithe, silvery creatures slipped from the forest as the lythari came to battle. Thorn's people, if just for this one time, would fight with her as a pack.
Packs of natural wolves came as well. With intelligence remarkable for forest creatures, they fell upon fallen zombies, dragging them toward the ravine.
A booming crackle came from the forest, and the thud of titanic steps. Cries of mingled fear and triumph rose from the villagers as a fifty-foot monster burst from the trees. Feet the size of hillocks slammed down as it stomped the zombie army, crushing the undead creatures into the soil. The wood man, legendary protector of Rashemen, had answered the song. The battle was over, and the surviving drow fled into the forest.
Power flowed through Liriel, burning her as if somehow the blood in her veins had turned to the acid venom of a black dragon. She began to sway on her feet. One task remained, she told herself.
But the song began to slip away, driven off by the terrible fire kindling over Liriel's heart. Time stopped, caught and immobilized by the searing agony. The stone beneath Liriel's feet seemed to turn molten and drift away. Vaguely familiar shapes took form in the dense gray mist, but Liriel was beyond knowing or naming them. Power swept through her, terrible power that merged the sun's fire, the crushing weight of stone, the screaming force of wind, and the immortal anguish she had sensed in the displaced elven souls woven into the tapestry.
She could not say when the agony peaked or when she could no longer bear it. It washed over her like waves of the sea or echoes in an Underdark cavern. Eventually she began to sense that the waves were receding, the echoes drifting into silence.
Someone slapped her awake none too gently. Liriel cautiously opened one eye. The sun was fully risen, and her chest burned with heat every bit as fierce. She looked down. The Windwalker hung over her heart, its gold blackened and its magic silenced.
Zofia took Liriel's hand in both of hers. Her aged face was radiant with joy. "The ghosts are free. The link between spirits and land is healed."
Liriel thought of the drow magic and the horror she had inadvertently unleashed upon