The Eighth Warden Bk. 03 Ch. 33-34

Chapter 33

Bobo was a coward.

He'd accepted that long ago. Whenever he was confronted with a choice to run or fight, he'd always chosen to run.

Life as a librarian had suited him fine for a while—there was little danger to be had there—but his grandfather's stories of great adventures had eventually proven too enticing to ignore. Bobo simply needed to find an adventure that required knowledge and intellect rather than brawn.

His first adventure had proven less adventurous and rather more greedy than he liked to remember—gathering up all the notes and translations he'd made from Ellerie's book, then slipping out of town in the dead of night. He'd considered asking her to let him participate in the search, but he'd expected her to turn him down, and worse, he'd feared that once she knew he wanted to find the ancient city himself, she'd take the book away and not allow him to translate any more of it. So he'd finished translating the important parts for himself, then ran away. He'd left the book itself, so it wasn't theft, exactly, except for the wages she'd paid him, but it certainly wasn't the grand start to his adventuring life that he'd always dreamed of.

In the hills east of the Black Crow Mountains, where he'd hoped to find evidence of old ruins that might lead him to Tir Yadar, he'd pretended to be a priest of the Fox. That, too, had been cowardice. He could put fancy words on it, pretending he'd done just as much for the people as any of the other fake priests roaming the hills, but the truth was, the hillfolk were a rough lot and he'd been scared of them. To keep himself safe, he'd decided to take advantage of the respect they showed their priests. While there, he'd come to realize that he liked being thought of as an important man, rather than just a bookish librarian with a talent for languages, so he'd remained in the hills even after it became clear his search had failed. But, eventually, he'd had to run again.

When Ellerie caught up with him in Circle Bay, he'd wanted to flee that time too, but Corec had forced him to make things right with her. It was hard to say no to Corec, especially after the man had saved his life. That incident had turned out better than Bobo could have hoped—working together, he and Ellerie had succeeded in finding Tir Yadar—but it hadn't changed who he was inside.

Despite his fear, though, he usually managed to find some way to contribute when his friends were threatened, even if it was typically just to stand in the back with Nedley and try to keep anyone from attacking Katrin or Shavala while the two women did whatever it was they did during a fight.

But this time, he couldn't see a way to help. They were on the third floor of a building, with Nedley guarding the stairwell. Katrin was cradling Shavala in her arms, the elven woman still moaning in pain from whatever had happened. Bobo hadn't been able to find anything wrong with her, but she still hadn't managed to get to her feet. Marco stood in the corner, looking as scared as Bobo felt. He wasn't a fighter either.

The enemy hadn't caught sight of the group inside the building yet, so there was nothing for Bobo to do other than watch as his other friends were surrounded. There were simply too many attackers for Corec and the rest to stop them all. Shavala's role in the plan had been pivotal, and when she'd collapsed, everything had started to unravel.

Some parts of the plan had worked. The enemies were still headed toward the decoy building, where Leena would remain until the last minute. And they were mostly following the two routes Corec had expected them to take.

But other parts hadn't worked. In addition to whatever had happened to Shavala, Josip had been injured, and Treya had been forced to leave Boktar and Razai to fend for themselves. Something else odd was happening down there too that Bobo couldn't quite put his finger on—something to do with the two men in heavy armor that were now facing off against them.

What could Bobo do, though? His salves wouldn't help Shavala. Did she need a healer? He should go fetch Treya, but that would mean he had to run into the battle. Could Treya even be spared from the fight? There were so many men down there. Corec would need her help.

No. It was better to stay here. After all, if the enemy discovered where they were, Nedley wouldn't be able to fight them all off on his own. Yes, that's what he'd do. He'd stay right where Corec had asked him to stay. He wasn't abandoning his friends. He was simply sticking to the plan.

Bobo waited for the wave of relief he usually experienced when avoiding a fight, but this time, it didn't come. Below him, Boktar was being forced back by the two heavily armored men, whose weapons—one carried a warhammer, the other a sword—were now glowing. The white glow reminded Bobo of the light that often surrounded Treya's fists when she was fighting. Were these the priests? Boktar was trying to fight back, but his strikes seemed to be blocked by a flickering aura that overlaid the men's armor.

Nearby, Razai was crouched down, her hands over her ears. Her curved knives lay abandoned on the ground. There were stories that priests sometimes had powers over demonborn.

Still watching over Shavala, Katrin began singing again, but the battle had grown so loud, it was impossible to tell if it had any effect. Josip was sitting up now, leaning against a wall, and Treya was helping Corec and Sarette guard the intersection.

Bobo glanced uncertainly from the melee to the stairwell and back again. He'd turned down Corec's offers to teach him how to use a crossbow. He'd turned down the occasional suggestions to buy some armor and learn how to use his walking cudgel as the weapon it truly was. Part of the reason he'd stayed with the group for so long was because they'd always protected him when he needed it, but now they were the ones who needed help, and there was nothing he could do.

It didn't matter, he decided. He had to try anyway. Taking a firm grasp on his cudgel, he jogged to the stairwell. He'd have to hurry if he was going to get to Boktar before the priests wore him down. If Bobo could distract them, the dwarven man might still be able to win the fight.

Then, something ... changed. Bobo's vision flashed with different images that went by too fast to see. His cudgel suddenly burst with white light as new knowledge forced its way into his brain. He didn't understand it all, not yet, but he knew enough. He couldn't do anything for Shavala, but he could help the others, and now he knew how.

He changed direction and took a running leap out of one of the openings that had once served as a window—though if it had ever held any glass, it was long since gone. He landed on the street two floors below with barely a stumble, his legs feeling sturdier than they'd ever been. Then he waded into the battle, swinging his glowing cudgel back and forth against the men with the knives, knocking them away with each hit. Had he always been this strong?

"Release her!" he shouted as he approached the priests, his words echoing strangely.

They ignored him, but Razai suddenly looked up, an expression of intense surprise on her face, which then grew into an evil grin. Snarling, she grabbed her knives and tackled the nearest priest, knocking the armored man to the ground. She straddled his chest and pressed her knee against his sword arm, pinning his weapon down, then rammed one of her knives up under his helmet, into the underside of his jaw.

Bobo gripped his cudgel with both hands and swung at the other man, hitting his shield hard enough to force him back. The protective aura flickered one last time and faded away. While the priest was off-balance, Boktar slammed his warhammer into the man's knee. The priest cried out in pain and collapsed, and Boktar finished him off by piercing his helmet with the spiked end of the hammer's head.

Bobo flinched as a spurt of blood hit him in the face. Cowardice wasn't the only reason he tried to avoid fighting.

"What was that?" Boktar called out, facing off against two more of the knife men.

Bobo said, "I ... I think something strange just happened." The strength he'd experienced faded away, and his legs suddenly felt wobbly. His vision went gray.

Razai caught him as he fell.

#

Ariadne ignored the sound of the battle. How could she take sides when she knew nothing about the combatants, other than the fact that one group was looting her home?

Wait. Looting? That part wasn't real, was it? Wasn't that part of the dream?

Nothing made sense anymore. She couldn't tell what was real and what was fake. The fortress was wrong. The ruins of Old Town were wrong, as was the view of the surrounding area. Even the people were wrong—humans and elves, but different somehow, and not just in the languages they spoke.

If the looting hadn't happened, where had the Necklace of Tongues come from? When it wasn't in use by an envoy to a distant land, it should have been stored in the Enchantment Repository. How had she gotten it?

Could everything be a dream? Everything she'd experienced since going into stasis? That had been one of her theories, but some things seemed too real for it all to be a dream. Wrong, but real. Using the necklace to interpret an unknown language had been unlike anything she'd ever felt before. How would a dream have come up with such a sensation?

Had she gone insane? Maybe she was still at home, awake but unable to recognize anything or anybody. And yet, the pain from the necklace had been real. She was certain of that. And the necklace had been looted from the Enchantment Repository.

But if the looting was real, that meant she was awake, and this was truly Tir Yadar. Her breath quickened, and her arms and fingers grew numb and tingly. She recognized the symptoms—she'd felt them before. She was hyperventilating.

Forcing all thoughts from her mind, she took a deep, slow breath, waited, then took another. It didn't take long for the numbness to disappear, at least now that she knew how to deal with it. The first time it had happened, after learning of her brother's death, she hadn't realized what was going on. The numbness had caused her to panic, making her hyperventilate even more. She'd nearly passed out before a nurse had explained that she was doing it to herself.

Calmer now, she patted the hilt of her longsword, reassuring herself that it was back. It gave her an anchor to hold onto. She'd only worn the panoply and blade of a Mage Knight for a week, but after seven years of training for the position, she'd grown accustomed to staying armed for most of her waking hours.

She took another deep breath, then forced herself to face the truth. There was no dreaming in stasis. If the body was placed outside of time, the mind must be outside time as well. If there was no time, there could be no dreams.

Which left two possibilities. Either she truly had gone mad, or everything she saw was real.

If this was Tir Yadar, what had happened to her people? Where had they gone? The amount of time that had passed—no, she had to ignore that. There were still limits to what her sanity could process.

Was she truly the last of the Mage Knights? What had happened to the two who'd managed to leave the pods? She would need to return to the stasis room to determine who they were, but she had her suspicions.

Thinking about that was better than thinking about being alone amongst warring tribes of human looters. Her mind would slip again if she spent too much time considering her situation. She had to do something else instead. She had to find the Chosar and the Mage Knights. She had to find the wardens—the real wardens, not this false one.

Ariadne's mind felt clearer than it had since she'd first entered the stasis pod. She was still hiding things from herself, she knew, but it was the best she could do for now.

The noise of the battle surged closer. Shouts and cries, and metal clanging against metal. Perhaps she should have positioned herself farther away, to not risk getting involved.

Yet, she kept thinking about what the false warden had said. Non-combatant civilians—farmboys who'd been hired to drive wagons—were hiding in a former granary nearby. She could see the structure from where she stood. One of the boys was staring at her from the entrance, but ducked back inside when he realized she'd seen him.

Ariadne had no desire to get in between two warring barbarian factions, and she certainly had no intention of protecting the group that was looting her home, but if she didn't want to fight, why had she placed herself between the battle and the civilians?

As she slipped that question into the pile of things she was trying not to think about, a squadron of five armed men rounded the corner. Their eyes went wide when they saw her standing before them. They approached her carefully, eyeing her armor with suspicion. She didn't recognize them from among the looters, which meant they must have accompanied the new group. They wore no uniforms and their armor had seen better days, but they appeared to know what they were doing. Warriors, then, but not soldiers.

"I have no quarrel with you, humans," Ariadne said, in the language she'd received from the false warden. "Kill the others if you wish." If they returned to the battle, they wouldn't find the hidden farmboys.

They didn't seem to understand her words, so she repeated them in The People's tongue. It didn't help. Instead of trying to communicate, they hefted their weapons and circled around her. If they were smart enough not to rush a knight in plate armor, they had the potential to be dangerous.

So be it.

Ariadne drew her longsword in a spinning motion, activating her combat spells as she blinked behind a man with no helmet. She finished her draw by slamming her blade halfway through his neck. Kicking his body off her weapon, she blinked again, reappearing behind a man wearing a coat lined with thin metal plates—regular steel, she thought, and perhaps thin enough that they couldn't block her sword. She rammed the tip through his armor and into his chest.

Her elder senses warned her of a presence closing in. She whirled around, parrying a strike from a third man's side sword.

His two remaining compatriots turned to run. Unfortunately, they ran in the wrong direction, toward the granary.

She blinked and appeared in front of them in a crouch, swinging at one man's knees. His armor didn't extend that far down, and her cut went deep into the bones in his leg. She jerked her sword out, then stood and batted the other man's spear away, striking his armor again and again until she broke through, leaving a deep slash into his torso.

Leaving those two to die from blood loss, she blinked again, returning to the third man. Not bothering with any niceties, she appeared behind him and swung her sword in a wide, overhead arc, down onto the thin metal of his helmet, splitting it in two. His body collapsed as if it was boneless.

Ariadne took a moment to catch her breath, then walked back to the bleeding men to finish them off. Now that the immediate danger had passed, it would be cruel to make them die slowly. Even demons were granted that much mercy on the battlefield.

She was already starting to feel the effects of her spells. Mage Knights faced limitations on their magic, especially on the arcane side, since burning out one's own gift of wizardry came with consequences. It allowed her to cast her spells nearly instantaneously, and without regard for the metal armor she wore, but it meant the number of spells she could learn was extremely limited.

Every Mage Knight had to make difficult choices. Blinking was a spell used for making quick strikes, but the downside was the hefty amount of magical power it consumed. Other knights made different decisions. The knight who'd worn the panoply before her had specialized in durability, able to remain on the battlefield for hours on end. Ariadne had figured that if she needed to fight for longer, she could simply avoid the blinking spell, but that was easier to say than do. She would need to learn self-control.

Just as she finished killing her two bleeding opponents, another man, this one bald, crept out of a gap between buildings, glancing back to make sure he hadn't been followed. She watched him, curious. She'd never seen him before, so he must have been one of the newcomers, but he wasn't armed.

He stopped in surprise when he encountered the first of the bodies, then looked up and saw her. He whispered something under his breath.

Too late, Ariadne realized it was a spell. Three darts of light hit her in the chest, dissipating against the mirrorsteel plating. A wizard, and one that didn't understand how to fight a Mage Knight. His eyes grew wide when his spell didn't affect her, and he quickly began muttering the words to another.

His first spell may have been ineffectual, but he might get lucky the next time, or he might choose a spell that her armor wouldn't block.

Ariadne was growing tired, but one more time wouldn't hurt. She blinked, reappearing directly in front of him. He was a regular wizard and wasn't wearing any armor, so she thrust her blade through his lung, ensuring he wouldn't be able to finish his casting. The look of surprise never left his face as he died.

She pulled her sword from his body but didn't bother cleaning or sheathing it. Instead, she stepped into a shadowed alleyway and watched the entrance to the granary. She was growing too lethargic to continue using magic. If any others came close to the civilians, she'd have to fight them the old-fashioned way.

#

Leena waited, tense, as the battle raged. Her role was to play the decoy, making sure the Seeker sent the enemy troops toward her position so the others could take them by surprise. If they reached her, or if the wizard tried to target the building she was in, she was supposed to teleport far enough away to stay safe.

The plan had started well, with their opponents' initial approach coming along the expected paths, but their greater numbers now threatened to overwhelm Corec and the others.

There was a disturbance in the distance as someone—was that Bobo?—leapt out of a window onto the street below and started swinging wildly. Leena blinked, not sure she was actually seeing what she was seeing.

Then, suddenly, Leena's Uncle Rohav appeared next to her, struggling with another Sanvarite dressed in the Zidari style. The man reared back and hit Rohav in the jaw, knocking him away, but a younger Traveler appeared out of nowhere, running at the man and tackling him to the ground. Rohav joined the younger man, and together, they were able to hold the enemy's Seeker down.

"Where's the rope?" Rohav shouted.

Leena ran to grab it, hoping their efforts wouldn't be in vain. If the Seeker was also a Traveler, the bonds wouldn't hold him, but it was rare for someone to be trained in both. While the three gifts were closely intertwined, usually only one was strong enough to be taught. Leena hadn't even realized she was a Seeker until she'd met Sarlo.

The three of them managed to bind the struggling man's feet together, and then tie his hands behind his back. Rohav removed his shoes and tossed them out the window, so that if he did escape his bonds, it would be harder for him to run away. Despite fighting their efforts the whole time, the Seeker didn't teleport. Either he wasn't a Traveler, or he was too exhausted to use the gift.

Or perhaps he was just pretending. Unfortunately, the rope was the best they could manage at the moment. Leena had asked Ellerie, but the elven woman didn't know any warding spells that would block Traveling.

"You're late," Leena told her uncle. "I was worried something had happened."