He shouldn’t care. Couldn’t afford to.
Didn’t.
Yes, best you take another edulis leaf, nicely boiled down with a little simarou and crushed beetle wing. Forget it. Forget it.
Takaar nodded. It was not often his tormentor adopted a sympathetic tone. Even rarer that he was right. Takaar returned to his shelter. A movement in the brush to his left caught his eye. He had faced every danger the rainforest could throw at a lone ula. There was nothing within it that could unnerve him now.
He stopped and stared hard into the undergrowth. A sleek form eased from within it, moving towards him. And it was not alone. He counted three. He should have been scared. He was easy prey. But they were not interested in his flesh.
Takaar crouched and held out a hand. One of them came forward. He felt the panther nuzzle his hand. Her tongue explored his palm and the head withdrew.
‘What is it?’ asked Takaar. ‘What is it that we feel?’ His tears stung the burns on his face. He moved forward on his belly, every excruciating moment punctuated by the feeling of his clothes dragging where they were fused to his body. The skin had blackened on his hands and raw flesh was all that remained of the soles of his feet. Yniss had spared him. Spared his eyes. He did not know why. The last thing he wanted was to live and see what filled his gaze.
He dragged himself the last yard. The stench of burned flesh filled his seared nose. In front of him lay the smoking corpses of Lorius and Jarinn. Olmaat’s tears were for them, for the fact he had failed them.
Where the men had gone he had no idea. Olmaat had been forced to suck in his agony, reach down within himself to still his shrieking body. Play dead while they made sure the enemy had killed their targets. They and Hithuur had left then. The cascarg and the blink-lives. The poison at the centre of faith.
Killed. That was the word they used. This was not a mere killing. This was destruction visited upon great elves. Inflicted with a hatred that defied understanding and using a power terrifying and incomprehensible. One that had left Olmaat with a lingering taste in his mouth he could not identify. More than that though, whatever it was the men had done, Olmaat had felt through his body.
Even when he had dived across Jarinn, trying to shield him, and been cast aside like a doll by the power of the fire column, he had felt a moment that he could only describe as elevating. Now the pain in every fibre made that a confusing memory.
Olmaat raised himself up on his blistered hands. His palms weren’t too awful but the backs were beginning to weep and blackened skin hung off in uneven strips. He gasped, the air over his mouth and down his throat like dragging flesh over broken glass.
What remained of the two bodies was melted together. Neither was recognisable. Parts of limbs had simply been obliterated. One skull had been crushed. No flesh whatever remained. No clothing and no distinguishing marks. It was like some bastard creation, immolated at birth. Something hideous and pitiful, one mouth open in final agony, praying for the end.
And at least that end had been swift. Olmaat prayed to Shorth to comfort the souls of both elves. He prayed to Tual to keep him alive until he warned Katyett and found those responsible. He prayed to Yniss to help him seek them, face them and kill them.
‘Olmaat?’
Relief took the strength from Olmaat and he collapsed back onto his stomach.
‘Help me, Pakiir.’
Olmaat heard a gasp and the choking back of a sudden sob.
‘Tell me that is not our Jarinn.’
‘I cannot. All that remains now is reparation and retribution.’
‘Yniss preserve us, is there no honour left?’ Pakiir knelt in Olmaat’s eye line and touched the charred hulk of Jarinn and Lorius to whisper a halting prayer. ‘What must I do, Olmaat?’
‘Find a temple healer. Find Katyett. The TaiGethen can trust no one. Our own people have turned against us. We must hunt and she must know what men have brought with them.’ Olmaat coughed. ‘No one else should see this place like it is.’
Olmaat felt a hand on his back. He sucked in the comfort of touch.
‘Rest if you can. Don’t try and move any more. I’ll bring people to you. You’ll be all right.’
‘How did you escape it?’
‘I am shamed, Olmaat. I ran back outside and hid until they were gone.’
Olmaat would have smiled but his lips were too charred for that. ‘No shame in common sense. Yniss guides your mind, Pakiir. Go.’
Pakiir’s footsteps faded quickly. Olmaat tried to lie absolutely still. The adrenaline was draining from him and the pain was becoming ever more intense. But he lifted his head one more time.
‘I am sorry, my priests, I have failed you. I have failed Yniss.’
Nausea swept through him and he surrendered himself to the blissful dark. It was a rerun of the scene in the Gardaryn though the stakes were immeasurably higher.
‘Soak the walls!’ roared an Al-Arynaar at the temple workers who had run out when the first torch and oil had struck the timbers. ‘Douse the flames and soak the walls. Do it!’
‘Weapons!’ ordered Katyett.
Twelve TaiGethen and forty Al-Arynaar drew their blades. They advanced a single pace. Each Tai cell formed into its three. Pelyn checked her ranks.
‘Double line. Advance on my order. Push them back.’
There were weapons in the crowd. Torches flew. Oil flasks shattered over the steps, over the walls and over the defenders. TaiGethen cells moved to the flanks. Katyett, Grafyrre and Merrat remained central. The mob had reacted to the first torch, howling in pleasure as flames ate briefly at a mural of Yniss giving life to the land. Al-Arynaar had dropped back to organise the temple workers.
‘Target the agitators,’ called Katyett.
Pelyn’s heart raced in her chest. She wiped oil from her face. How close they stood to the brink.
‘Move in,’ said Pelyn.
She was at their head. The Al-Arynaar marched forward, swords held low but ready. The crowd backed off, but from all parts was being exhorted to hold.
‘Remember who you really are,’ said Pelyn. ‘Ordinary people. You have children, you have lives to lead. Go back to them.’
They moved closer: Al-Arynaar and citizen could almost touch. The rain was coming down harder now but torches bathed in pitch would burn and the oil was resistant enough to do real damage. A torch was thrust through the front rank of the crowd and into the midriff of an Al-Arynaar.
Already covered in oil, she staggered back, flame shooting up her armour, across her hands and into her face. She screamed, pain and fear mingling. Three of her brothers dropped their swords and threw themselves on her, bearing her to the ground. And out of the crowd stormed six ulas with more torch-bearers behind.
They rushed the break in the line. Knives and swords rose. Helpless Al-Arynaar were going to be injured or killed. Pelyn had no time to think. She blocked a downward strike with her blade, heaved the ula’s arm back across his body and whipped her blade across his chest, a battle cry escaping her lips as she did so.
Blood sprayed into the air to mix with the rain. The ula was flung back, stumbling, dropping his knife and grabbing at his body. Pelyn saw it all through a haze. The mouths of elves dropping open. The fingers being raised to point. And the collapse of any semblance of order.
Screams rang out through the crowd. Panicked people ran left, right and back. ula and iad pushed each other down and aside to escape. More elves threw themselves at the Al-Arynaar. Fists struck down at the burning warrior and her protectors. Fingers raked across faces. Al-Arynaar barrelled into the attackers, sweeping them away.
TaiGethen attacked from left and right. Katyett hurdled the Al-Arynaar line with Grafyrre and Merrat. She bounced on one leg, rose and kicked out flat, driving the blade and arm of her target hard back into his gut. He fell back, sword arm flying out in a futile attempt at balance. The blade struck the face of another standing next to him, taking out an eye.