They passed through the outer line of standing stones and had gone some ten yards farther when a joyous voice cried out the boy’s name. Cyronathan greeted his mother with relief and made plain his wish to escape.
Gilthas bent to set him on the ground and felt something give way inside. A rush of warmth flooded his chest, and a loud gasp was wrenched from his lips. The boy, not noticing his agony, dashed away to his parents, but Gilthas continued to fold, going down on his knees. Wide eyed and open mouthed, he stared at the elves rushing by on both sides. No breath would enter his lungs. He could make no sound. Slowly, he toppled to the ground. The vision in his right eye faded, submerged in a wash of red.
Screams pierced the air as fleeing elves realized who he was. In moments the Speaker’s faithful bearers, still carrying the empty palanquin, rushed up beside him. Truthanar arrived on their heels.
“He’s hemorrhaging!” the healer cried. He rolled Gilthas onto his back. “I need water for the Speaker!”
Pitchers, buckets, and brimming cups appeared in moments. Truthanar rinsed the still-flowing blood from his king’s mouth. None of the helpful civilians or warriors gathered round could tell him where Sa’ida was. Soldiers scouring the camp for her had met with no success. Truthanar commandeered help from the multitude, and two dozen elves who’d just raced out of camp ran back in even more rapidly to seek the human priestess.
Gilthas’s eyes were closed, and he no longer fought to breathe. Truthanar elevated his head and shoulders. With a ‘slim silver lancet, the healer slashed the Speaker’s geb, exposing Gilthas’s emaciated chest. Carefully probing down the ladder of ribs, Truthanar found the spot he sought. Without explanation or warning, he plunged the lancet between two ribs. Dark blood poured from the wound. Elves clustered around screamed anew.
“Had to be done,” Truthanar explained. “Accumulated blood was compressing the lung.”
As the blood poured out, their Speaker’s breathing eased. Everyone could see his chest rise and fall and saw the terrible waxen pallor fade from his cheeks. A few minutes longer, and the Speaker of the Sun and Stars would have drowned in his own blood. Although Truthanar’s voice was calm and matter-of-fact as he said this, the hand that had just wielded the lancet so confidently shook as he worked to bind the wound he’d made.
Gilthas stirred. His eyes opened. “Ken-li,” he whispered.
Tears fell from the healer’s eyes. “May the gods help you, sire. May they help us all.”
Riding up with his lieutenants, Hamaramis saw the Speaker lying on the ground surrounded by a spreading stain and feared the worst. The old general, long past leaping from the back of a still-moving horse, did just that.
“Truthanar! Does he live?” he shouted, scattering elves from his path.
“He lives, Hamaramis, but not for long.” The aged Silvanesti held the hand of the ruler of the united elf nations and wept unashamedly.
“Cleanse, O cleanse the world, Mighty Power! Take back that which was yours!”
Faeterus spoke the last line of the fourth canto. As he drew breath to begin the fifth and final part of his great incantation, the ground began to quake. Rocks large and small tumbled down the mountainside. One struck the spire next to him, shearing it off and sending sharp shards flying.
Favaronas, edging toward the sorcerer, ducked, throwing his arms over his head. Faeterus turned away to shield his own face from flying stone.
Angrily, Faeterus intoned, “Rabthe”—Stillness—and the shaking stopped. He laughed. Looking at the elf cringing at his feet, he confided, “Not even the gods can stop me.”
He embarked upon the final canto of his song of annihilation.
Chapter 20
May the Door of Heaven open wide for Him Who Bears the Key.”
Faeterus lifted his left hand. He held the long parchment, tightly rolled, onto which had been burned the inscription revealed by the valley’s standing stones. Under the spell of the sorcerer’s oratory, the columns of light emanating from the monoliths angled inward, converging on the bottom of the swirling cloud at a point directly over the Tympanum.
The brilliant concentration of light, painful to behold, must be the Door, Favaronas decided. Faeterus had reached the climax of his conjuration. The next line of the houmrya was “Let the Light shine forth so all may See.” Favaronas had no doubt the sorcerer would change the final word to “die,” or “vanish,” or some other destructive command that fit the structure of the poem, and that would be the end. Favaronas’s exhausted brain could think of no way to stop him.
He reached up one trembling hand and clutched the hem of the sorcerer’s ragged robe.
Kerian and Taranath cautiously lifted their heads above the edge of the plateau. The Lioness drew her sword.
Magically restrained but still a horrified witness, Sa’ida screamed, begging her patron deity to intercede.
“Let the Light shine forth—”
The sorcerer’s demand ended with a gurgle. Favaronas looked up.
An arrow protruded from Faeterus’s neck. Blood, black in the muted light, coursed down the front of his robe. He swayed but remained upright. With his free hand he groped for the arrow. It was deeply embedded in the left side of his neck. His fingers brushed over it but failed to grasp it. A second black bolt struck him in the back, and down he went.
Unseen and unheard, Sa’ida shouted in triumph. The goddess had heeded her servant’s pleas. Or had she? Would the Divine Healer send black arrows in answer to a devoted prayer?
The spell pinning Sa’ida to the rock dissolved as its maker’s life ebbed, and her joy changed to frustration. She felt herself pulled back to her body, lying unconscious in the elf camp, and she fought against it. The power tapped by Faeterus must be dispersed or safely channeled. If it was not, it would run riot, endangering everyone in the valley. Whereas before, all she wanted was to escape, now she fought to keep her naes on the Stair of Distant Vision.
The spell that paralyzed Favaronas’s legs likewise faded. His limbs came alive again, kindling into pain as if ten thousand needles pricked his flesh. He pounded on his legs with clenched fists, trying to force them to work.
Faeterus lay on his side only a few feet away, the hood fallen partly back from his face. He gurgled in helpless fury, then his lips began to move. He might yet complete his terrible design! Favaronas dug in toes and fingers and propelled himself to the sorcerer’s side. He clamped a bloodied hand over Faeterus’s mouth, making certain he could say nothing. Faeterus struggled weakly. Favaronas put his other hand over the sorcerer’s face and leaned all his weight on them. The spasms subsided to twitches then to nothing. Faeterus’s body constricted in a monumental exhalation, and the last flicker of life finally departed his grotesque body.
His death did not end the titanic conjuration he’d set in motion. The brilliant “door” at the center of the cloud remained, and the cloud itself began to seethe and twist. It spat a narrow bolt of lightning that struck the Tympanum with a loud crash. A second bolt, larger than the first, cracked the granite disk in two.