Hiding from the most dangerous of all predators.
A low, hornlike bellow sounded. Dread gripping him, Ceredon stood and faced the Black Spire. With distance it looked almost appealing: a fountain of swirling colors pulsed out of it like those in the sky over Mount Hailen during the winter northern lights. That appeal died the moment he spied the monstrous blob of writhing gray flesh, made from the remains of his people, in front of the Spire. Hoofed feet sprouted from the rear of the heap, and clawed, pawlike appendages from the front. A spiked tail grew like a snake wiggling from its leathery egg. The gray flesh took on a bumpy texture, and though Ceredon was too far away to know for sure, it seemed like scales slowly covered its hide. A backbone formed, rippling as it writhed, and pointed spines grew from each bulging vertebra. Last came the bulbous head, the snout growing outward, stretching to each side as a horrific face took form: wide-set black eyes, huge slotted nostrils, a hinged jaw. The still-forming thing threw its head back, opening its maw to silently scream. Teeth poked through the pink flesh inside its mouth, and a monstrous pair of tusks popped out from either side of its maw, creaking as they grew ever outward, not stopping until they extended far beyond its triangular, fleshy nose.
The shifting of its body wound down as it fell to all fours. Ceredon imagined bones growing, muscle tissue knitting together, organs sprouting from the combined remnants of nearly six hundred dead elves. Despite his horror, he marveled at the size of the thing. It had to be thirty feet long, perhaps forty given its spiked tail, and it looked like a ghastly combination of a bull and one of the giant water lizards that once roamed the Rigon Delta, but with the tusks of a grayhorn. The book was nowhere to be seen.
Silence fell over the desert. Even the wind seemed to die, as if Celestia herself were holding her breath.
The Black Spire throbbed a few final times, and then a high-pitched scream discharged from within. All light combined into a blinding white, leaping from the obelisk and swallowing the newly made creature. Ceredon threw his arm over his eyes, unable to bear its brilliance. And then, with a deafening boom, the Black Spire exploded. In millions of bits, it flew into the air, soaring for miles and then falling like an ashen rain. As Ceredon looked on, tears in his eyes, the last of the light faded, and only a blackened hole in the sand remained of what had once been a part of his goddess.
Through the dimness Ceredon watched the creature suck in a long, labored breath. Its eyes, formerly filled with shadow, began to glow, bringing forth that same red resonance Darakken had possessed when it dwelled inside Clovis Crestwell. The beast shook its head, snot flying from its bull’s nose, and rose to its full height. Maw lifted to the heavens, it let out a booming roar that seemed to go on and on.
Ceredon fled west, one foot in front of the other, pushing his aching body to its limits. He didn’t know what he’d do, what he could do. But he had to gather himself, figure out a way to keep Aully and Kindren safe. He had to protect his people. As the terrifying roar continued, he realized it was not just a primal howl, but a single word, stretched out and mutated, full of terror, full of exaltation.
“REBORN!”
CHAPTER 23
The snow had stopped, and Mordeina was quiet for the first time in gods knew how long. No shouts from the army outside their walls, no barrage of heavy stones, no screams and shrieks of the frightened and dying.
Ahaesarus didn’t like it, not one bit.
The Master Warden pulled his heavy woolen cloak over his shoulders as he exited Manse DuTaureau. He gazed out at the calm night, taking in the eerie white world around him. From atop Manse’s high hill, he saw Ashhur standing at the crest of the wall. The god’s back was to him, white robe fluttering as he stared at the army that gathered across the valley. Ahaesarus lowered his eyes, reflecting on how the settlement he now called home looked so different. What had once been a rambling green land filled with rolling hills and small pockets of trees now closely resembled the village he had lived in his whole life, back on Algrahar, the same village that was decimated when the winged demons descended from the sky to lay waste to everything.
Ahaesarus shuddered.
He turned left and walked along the footpath circling the manse, his keen eyes observing. To the south there was the heavy gate cut into the inner wall, with seven-foot-tall stone barricades lining the road leading into the settlement. Murder row, Ashhur had called it. Much like the causeway between the two walls, should the enemy succeed in pushing through the portcullis, the tall barricades would hem them in on either side, and they would be helpless as Ashhur’s defenders hacked away at them from above.
Fifty yards behind the gate was the bunker his god had raised, a six-hundred-foot long crescent that ran from the far side of murder row to well past Celestia’s tree. The trench was shielded by solid rock on the side facing the walls; it opened on the other, allowing the defenders to hunker down inside and work on molding steel into weapons, or await their next shift atop the wall. Right now he saw the glow of a few fires inside the bunker as those still awake burned the midnight oil.
Farther east, in a slight vale, sat the remains of the storehouses where the winter provisions had once been held, along with the old well that had been Geris Felhorn’s prison. The rickety storehouses were long dismantled, the wood used to construct the many huts that had risen up all throughout Mordeina. There were over thirty of those twenty-foot-by-twenty-foot huts down there now, each crammed with three or more families. Even on the footpath high above, he could still be hear the soft cries of children.
Ahaesarus walked north around the manse. Mordeina’s frozen fields came into view, partly covered with snow and ice and partly muddy and dark, the result of Wardens painstakingly tilling the land with Ashhur’s assistance, the god using his magic to raise crops to feed his children. Those crops were stunted, pathetic, barely enough to feed two hundred men, never mind two hundred thousand. The earth was used up, its nutrients sapped over the long year, and too much of Ashhur’s energy was in use keeping the magical barrier around the walled settlement intact. It seemed even a god could not make something out of nothing.
Beyond the fields were the grazing grounds, where barely two hundred cattle, swine, goats, and sheep milled about, watched over by a small cluster of Wardens. Butted up against the grounds were the stables, where most of the fifteen score horses had settled in for the night. Ahaesarus sighed. When they’d first raised the walls around the settlement, there had been almost two thousand animals here, most owned by House DuTaureau, but also many others brought into the settlement by those seeking the protection of Mordeina’s walls. With the stores all but used up, and crops a near impossibility, it had come to only the meat the animals provided to sustain the masses. Nearly four hundred of them had been slaughtered over the last month alone, even newly born calves and kids. Not even heavy rationing would slow it down. People had to eat, after all, and Wardens too. At this rate, they would exhaust their food supplies in less than two weeks. As for the horses, some of them had begun to die off as well, no matter the healing touches the Wardens gave them. Horses belonged in the plains, running and breeding and free. To be locked within a confined space was against their nature. The only saving grace was that whenever a horse died, one cow was saved from slaughter for another day.