‘Shield down, shield down!’
White teardrops tore into them. Ren lost her entire right leg, screaming as her soul was torn from her body. Darrick had charged at the enemy line, drawing fire all the way. His body jerked, smoked and was torn through with burning holes, falling unrecognisable to the ground. Denser paused to cast but Sirendor dragged him away.
‘No time, come on.’
Sol tried to get to his feet but his leg wouldn’t support him. He stumbled again. And then Erienne screamed. The cry of a little girl in agony. And in the midst of hearing Hirad shout for them all to run, Sol saw her staring at her arms while they blistered and burned, the flames reaching up to her head and engulfing her hair and face.
‘No, no!’ It was Denser, but Sirendor wouldn’t let him go. ‘Not again, please, not again.’
Sol began to crawl towards her. She was lying writhing on the scorched earth, beating at the flames which encased her. The others of The Raven downed were already gone. So brief a return, snuffed out so easily.
A foot came down on his back. He turned his body to grab at it and another pressed into his neck. Weapons pointed at his head and chest. He lay still. All he could see were the helmets of three of the enemy ringed by smoke and fire. He heard the screams of the few survivors as they were hunted down and obliterated. He fancied he could still hear Hirad but it had to be wishful thinking.
‘Sorry, Hirad. Why didn’t I listen?’ he whispered.
‘You.’ The voice belonged to one of the helmeted figures. The voice of a God. ‘You are the key.’
Sol frowned. A thundering, guttural roar told him the new machine had begun its work.
‘We will fight to the last man and woman. Your losses will be beyond contemplation.’
‘Not any more.’ Sol wasn’t sure, but he thought the man laughed. ‘Come.’
‘I—’
It wasn’t an invitation. A hand reached down to grip him and Balaia ceased to exist.
Chapter 14
Auum waited until the Calaian Sun had reached deep waters before shedding his tears. The greedy and the disbelievers had burned in their paper castles surrounded by their brief empires just as he had said they would. Clamouring and crying on the docksides as the last ships sailed.
He should not have been desolate for them but he was. Desolate for what they had become. More human than elf in their last moments. Hanging on to material things when the elven nation was reverting to that which it had been for long periods of its history. Back to the life of which the most ancient writings spoke. As nomads. Akin to the Arakhe, the demons, in more respects than they would care to admit.
And just like the Arakhe, the elves were chased from dimension to dimension, their enemy relentless in pursuit of the prize which each elf carried and each temple and city harboured in great density. Mana.
Auum had watched the glorious spires and proud houses of Ysundeneth consumed by flame. Scorched by the heat of mana fire. He had seen the clouds rise above the vydospheres and had known the hungry machines sucked in the very life of Calaius with each belching breath. He grieved for the city. And he grieved for every elf who died trying to keep the Garonin back for long enough that the fortunate few should escape.
But he grieved for the rainforest infinitely more. Not its temples. Though they were beautiful and ancient, they could be rebuilt and rededicated. But for all of Tual’s denizens, innocent victims of a war of millennia that simply brushed them aside. The rainforest was gone. His home for over three thousand years. The place where he had thought he might choose to step across to his rest when his work was finally done.
It might recover. Eventually. There was little more tenacious than the root and branch over which Beeth presided, after all. But would Tual’s denizens return? Those not immolated would have been pushed south into the desert lands or north and east into the sea. So many species would be gone forever. Just like the elves. Forced to adapt and move on, otherwise to perish.
Auum stood in the stern of the vessel. Five days on, the tears had long dried up but the cloud was still visible above ruined Calaius. Behind him Captain Jevin kept a steady hand on the tiller as he had done for as long as Auum had known him. A sea captain without peer and a braver elf Auum had yet to meet bar those of the TaiGethen themselves.
‘It will get no better for the want of staring at it,’ said Jevin.
Auum turned to see Jevin’s broad back.
‘We killed our own to save ourselves. There can be no greater crime.’
Auum’s memories came flooding back. The flames hemming them in as Ysundeneth burned. The desperation to make it aboard ship. The pleading, the threats and the promises. And finally the spells deployed to force order and the TaiGethen attacking those demanding passage when they had originally chosen to stay.
‘Think on who you saved, not who had to die. It is the way of elves.’
‘I cannot forget so easily,’ said Auum. ‘Every drop of blood is on my conscience.’
‘Who said anything about forgetting? We’re a long time alive, some of us, and our memories come with us all the way. But for now focus on what you have, not what you have lost.’
‘You sound like me,’ said Auum, coming to his side.
Jevin smiled at him. ‘Well, you talk a good deal of sense. Most of the time. And I make it my mission to listen to elves who kill with your efficiency.’
‘And what do we have, Captain?’
‘Look about you, Lord Auum. The sea is full of elven sails pushed hard by the devil wind the Garonin have caused with their fire. Almost three hundred, and all will make landfall before night.’
‘But do you know how few of the elven population of Calaius that represents?’
Jevin’s smile faded a touch. ‘Less than ten per cent, I am sure.’ ‘Less than five, my friend, even though every vessel is overburdened. I should be happy, I know. It is more than we took from the fires of the Garonin before. But we must also pray for the souls of all those who perished. For all that we achieved, we only saved forty thousand of our people. Every other soul is trapped and restless until we can find a new home.’
Jevin nodded and turned back to the wheel for a moment. Auum looked out over the crowded deck at the desperate and desolate, the bemused and the stricken. The confidence of millennia swept away in a few days.
‘You have many problems ahead before that time comes,’ said Jevin, inclining his head at the civilians.
‘The Garonin at our backs, an army of the displaced to move and feed, and Yniss only knows what state Balaia will be in. We have to assume they are also under attack.’
‘You’ll be lucky to find a college standing,’ said Jevin.
‘Yet we must hope Julatsa’s Heart beats for long enough to see us safely to the Wesmen and away.’
‘And you. Still determined to go through with your plan, then?’
‘Two men still live who I regard as highly as any TaiGethen elf. I will not leave them behind. The bulk of the civilians will travel to the west with Rebraal to appeal to the Charanacks. They have no mana, surely their path to the spirits is clear, and if it is, it might provide our means of escape.’
‘And if it doesn’t?’
‘Then the elven race dies on Balaia.’
Jevin blew out his cheeks and nodded his head. ‘Anyone else would sound overdramatic. You just scare me.’