Wings Over Talera - Charles Allen Gramlich [43]
Valyan heard the name he hated and walked over to stand above me. Graye listened from among the sabruns. The night held frogs that drummed the marsh with their songs; there came the plash of movement in the waters around us. But between the four of us a silence ached.
I finally broke that silence with two questions. “What is Vohanna? Where is Vohanna?”
“Vohanna is god,” Eric answered, as if it were something he’d memorized. “She dwells in the ancient earth.” Then: “Ruenn,” he said. His voice seemed bruised.
“What, Eric?”
“You must save Bryce. Must....”
The muscles twisted beneath my skin. My heart banged. I leaned forward. “Where is he?”
Still, he did not look up from the ground.
“Eric!”
He winced. But his words came in a tumble. “He is with Vohanna. In the city below the city. With the ruins above.”
“Vohan,” Graye interjected. Then he glanced at me, rushed on. “Our attack. The day I was captured. When we...shot down your airship. I had flown in from the east but was joined by others. They came from the north. From the direction of Vohan.”
I nodded. Graye was only speaking my own thoughts of that ancient and fallen citadel on Nyshphal, rumored to have once been the center of Vohanna’s empire. I wondered. Was it still?
My thoughts flew to Bryce then, lingered, and circled back to Eric. The cousin I remembered had been wild and joyful, willful but brave—with his mind always focused outward on life. My eyes grew damp to see him now, shivering, terrified, sick all the way to his bones.
“What happened to you, Eric?” I asked softly. “How did this come to pass?”
He tried to straighten but fell back against the tree weakly. I gave him more water and it steadied him. He wiped his mouth with a hand that trembled only slightly.
“That night,” he began. “On Earth.”
I knew what night Eric meant. His last night on Earth. Mine too. After a storm at sea, we had dropped anchor at an island where Eric and others of my then crew decided to camp on shore. They had disappeared in a blaze of sorcerous fire and it had been in searching for them that Bryce and I stumbled upon the gate to Talera and were drawn through (see Swords of Talera).
“That night, we were taken. By beasts that thought like men. We were taken as fodder for Vohanna’s armies, as she gathers her power to restore her rule in this world.”
My teeth clenched. “And the others of my crew?” I ground out.
“They serve her now. Or they’re already dead.” He seemed to shrink in on himself. “I don’t...remember much of it,” he added. I knew he lied but did not have the heart to force that story from him. But....
“And what of Bryce?” I asked. “He was not stolen with the crew. How did he end up with Vohanna?”
“I don’t know,” Eric said. “He was brought in later. She…Vohanna...took....” He stopped for a moment, panting slightly, as if it were growing difficult for him to breathe. “She took a...liking to him.”
A cold belt of fear tightened around my chest at those words, but his next ones were worse.
“He didn’t...didn’t fight her. Not much at least.”
“And the others fought?” I asked, the pitch of my voice rising in my own ears. I lifted a hand to my mouth, began to gnaw at my thumb.
“Some did. I did.” He half sobbed. “Not that it mattered. No one fights her for long. She wins. Always wins.”
I forced my hand down to grasp his shoulder. I forced my voice into a semblance of control.
“It’ll be all right now, Eric,” I said. “We’ve taken out the stone she was using to rule you.”
He laughed bitterly. “Only one of them, Ruenn. Only the most obvious. There are others.”
“Where?” I asked, squeezing his shoulder harder. “Tell me and we’ll take those too.”
His next words let me know how foolish I was.
“Inside, Ruenn. Inside my body. In my guts.” His voice sagged. “In my soul.”
I wanted desperately to weep.
“How long?” I asked, and he did not question my meaning.
He shrugged, hopelessly. “Hours. Minutes! As soon as she recognizes that she’s lost the connection she’ll move to regain control.”
He grabbed my hand where it rested on