The Fickle Winds of Autumn
68. Discovery of a Theft

Kira’s ears prickled with nervous alarm; the anxious acid stung through her being.

It was senseless for them both to die.

“They’re coming!” she hissed to Ellis. “Run!”

She crawled her bruised and winded body back along the slender beam of bridge; her ribs jarred and stole her breath with every tender movement.

The Reevers were coming - there was no hope for her - she was completely exposed on the barren strip of rock, suspended and vulnerable above the hostile pool of bubbling lava.

Ellis stretched out his hand to her.

“I won’t leave you! You can make it!” he urged.

The bitter rock dug into her knees and blistered palms; the forbidding heat bellowed up its venomous sulphur at her.

Glwnn and Adden moved from the shadows. Aldwyn stooped into the room and uttered a low, mesmerising chant where he knelt.

The footsteps hurried and grew louder.

She hardly dared glance toward the entrance - what good would it do?

Her tight, forlorn stomach knew they were sure to catch her; to devour her; to torture and destroy her.

She forced herself forward; she was nearly within touching distance of the solid floor.

Three or four heavy-set Reevers lurched into the chamber; her panicking eyes refused to stop and count their menacing outlines.

“Kill them!”

The voice that echoed through her dismal fear was the Prince she had overheard before.

A blurring arrow streaked across the room from the shadows by the grille. It thudded into the chest of the closest Reever who cried out as a twisting column of dissolving embers gushed out from his wound. He fell to the shocked ground, a crumbling a pile of tormented ash.

The Reevers charged towards the direction of the arrow, their bodies a darting confusion of speed and anger.

A fierce clang of metal echoed across the chamber; the swords of Glwnn and Adden flashed in the orange flare of the lamps; the Reevers’ broad axes sparked and crackled in their furious clubbing contacts; Aldwyn’s solemn chant deepened in fervent intensity.

Two more thickset Reevers charged into the chamber.

The taller one wore a heavy jewelled collar around his powerful neck.

“Stop the magikant!” his voice boomed as they tore towards the clashing melee.

Ellis’s desperate face reached out to her, stretching over the harrowing, raucous lava.

A Reever sprinted towards him. He was out in the open, on the exposed floor of the chamber - he was sure to be killed.

“Behind you!” Kira shouted.

Ellis turned to draw a hunting knife from his belt.

The on-rushing Reever pounced and thudded into Ellis’s unprepared body.

The violent impact of the blow sent Ellis sprawling to his back; he skidded toward the scalding edge of the lava pool; his knife clattered useless to the ground; his head dangled limply above the ferocious glowing magma.

A scream rang out from the shadowy corner by the grille; another Reever clutched at a spiralling stream of distorted fiery fragments billowing up from his wounded chest.

Aldwyn’s mouth murmured in a frantic, deep focus.

What was the spell he was preparing?

Why was it taking so long?

Could the soldiers protect him long enough?

Ellis was helpless and alone.

They would never get to him in time - she could not look to them for assistance.

The huge Reever towered over him and grinned as he raised his gleaming axe high above his head, the thin greyness of his skin taut across his powerful build.

The hatred and strength glared deep from his eyes, and the hollow staring sockets of the charnel skulls that surrounded them.

Kira strained out a fearful trembling hand, determined to reach Ellis - to help somehow, to do something; so close - she could smell the danger of his impending death and taste the keen, clear edge of the axe as its dazzling metal glinted in the turbulent flames.

But there was no time.

The pendulum blade arced to strike.

Her body screamed out to reach him, paralysed by the numbing shock that pinned her knees to the hot bridge.

If only she could get to him, if only she could help.

She could almost touch him, but her desperate, pliant fingers would not stretch far enough.

Ellis stared up at his disastrous fate - trapped beneath the spell of the awful blade and the terrifying song of his own death.

The life drained from his shocked face; but she could not reach him - she could not help him, or the panicking, onrushing echo of the crowd at the Grove.

This was not how it was meant to be.

This was not what the Surrounder had promised - to relax back peacefully into his cradling arms.

All her hopes of happiness flickered and vanished.

All the promises of their life together, brutally extinguished in a moment of searing pain.

She screwed her eyes tight against the horrors of the scene; her bleak, empty hand longed and ached, straining across the boiling lava, just to touch him, to help him somehow, to be of some comfort.

The waste of it all!

The cruel agony!

The biting descent of raging frustration, unbridled, unconstrained, burning more fiercely than the roaring magma beneath her.

“Nnoooo!” she screamed.

Her sobbing head rattled with the stark effort, her trembling body shook to its breaking point at the bitter injustice.

A pure violent pulse vibrated down the length of her arm, her shocked fingers stung in sour, dismal pain far deeper than the oppressive torture of the engulfing heat.

She refused to open her eyes.

How could she?

Why would she want to gaze upon the disconsolate death of Ellis?

She was determined to avoid it - never to have it etched across her sorrowful memory, to engulf her life forever.

But the whipping sting of her throbbing arm shocked her eyes into peeling open against her will.

The huge Reever stood over Ellis, his hands flailed and clutched at a gaping hole which burned through his chest.

A flare of swirling sparks and embers spread out from the wound, absorbing his crumbling body, devouring his frame. He writhed and screamed in his torment, and staggered to the ground, consumed in a blazing pile of ash and agony.

What had happened?

Perhaps another arrow from Beris?

But the squalling angry sounds of sharp metal clashing, roared and echoed on - he was too busy defending his own life near the grille to have helped.

She shook her writhing arm out.

Had she somehow caused it?

A sensation of guilt prickled across her confused thoughts.

Perhaps it had been something to do with holding the relic in that hand?

She knew she could no longer trust her fingers to tell her the truth.

Or perhaps it had been something else entirely?

Ellis scrambled to his feet.

The piercing sounds of angry fighting raged through the chamber and jolted her thoughts back to the perilous situation.

Now was probably not the best time to stop and ask questions.

“Quickly! Move!” Ellis shouted as he stretched out a hand towards her.

She limped towards him on all fours as quickly as she dared; her mind still jumbled with confused thoughts and unanswered puzzles, which raced and burned up at her through the stinging heat, as she grasped his grateful hand.

Her crushed knees sagged with relief as she stood on the solid floor, safe from the swirling threat of the lava; safe with Ellis - but the fierce cries of battle would not allow them to rest.

They must get out. They must get back to the grille opening in the corner and escape.

But Aldwyn had ceased chanting.

Why was he no longer absorbed in his focus?

Surely they needed his magik now more than ever?

Why had he allowed his concentration to falter?

Perhaps it was him who had saved Ellis?

The large Reever with the jewelled collar loomed over him and raised his axe to strike.

Aldwyn’s blanched face stared up, his desperate hand scrabbled frantically on the floor behind him - his flailing fingers stumbled and wrapped around the hilt of the Quillon.

The Reever swung down hard; his terrible blade cleaved through the flickering orange light. Adden thrust his sword across its fearful destructive arc - but the quick course of the blade swerved and sliced at his outstretched arm; he cried out as it severed his exposed limb and fell to the ground in the sorrowful throws of a painful death.

The dire Reever turned to Aldwyn and raised to strike again, but Aldwyn thrust the biting blade of the Quillon up, deep into his stomach.

The Reever screeched out his agony and reeled away; his axe clattered sharply to the ground as he grasped at his wound.

The drifting flakes of burning ember began to rise and swirl around him; he staggered back towards the entrance and collapsed.

The Prince barged Glwnn to the floor and turned, sprinting to the collared Reever, his form a streaking blur of speed.

He knelt by the dying Reever and tried to clasp his hand; the wounded body crumbled and dissolved into a myriad of glowing sparks, which caught the thermal draughts of the lava and drifted, swirling away.

“Father! No!” the Prince cried out, as he held up a handful of smouldering dust.

For a deafening moment, a profound silence stunned through the chamber; the Reevers stood transfixed, staring agape at the smoking, wasted cinders.

Kira grasped her chance and hobbled back towards the opening in the wall, her legs creased in pain - the close strides of Ellis just behind.

Aldwyn sprang to his feet with surprising swiftness and gripped the trestle of one of the huge bowl-lamps which flamed above him. He strained to pull it down.

“The lamps!” he shouted, his knuckles white with effort.

Ellis dashed to join him and heaved at the opposite corner.

Kira reached the second bowl and pushed desperately; her weary, aching legs trembled with the struggling exertion; the rough trestle dug deep into her blistered hands.

Beris flung his weight at the other corner; the bowl shifted and wobbled uneasily above her.

She thrust with her whole body; her back tensed under the convulsing pressure; the terrified sweat forced its way down her straining spine.

The Reevers snarled up from their stunned grief.

The bowl tilted; the weighty mass of oil slopped unsteadily overhead.

A Reever charged at them, baring his sharpened teeth as he swooped to attack.

Glwnn’s sword hacked at him and held him at bay.

Every sinew in Kira’s body wrestled against the huge tottering lamp.

A second Reever readied his axe and sped at Glwnn as he pulled his reeking sword clear of the first.

Kira tried to turn her wincing eyes away as the great blade tore through the whistling air and sank deep into Glwnn’s flesh.

The Reever growled his approving triumph and turned to attack Kira.

To her left, the first great lamp swung down and crashed to the ground. The huge bowl thudded and splintered, crushing and incinerating the Reever; its smashed shards scattered in all directions; its heavy, seeping oil sprayed across the floor in oozing streaks of roaring flame.

A writhing living barrier leapt up, partly blocking off the Reevers who jerked back from the conflagration and howled their outrage.

Kira heaved at her trestle - the floor at her side was still exposed without the protection of the flowing fire.

Ellis dashed to help, his face red with effort.

She leant her full body weight into it; she dug into the ground with determined legs; every muscle and sinew strained; the fear and heat dripped from her breathless body.

More Reevers poured into the chamber and charged toward the grille opening.

The giant trestle rocked and swayed; she pulled her exhausted hands away as the bowl lurched beneath its own gravity and toppled, thundering to the shaking ground. Fragments of the vessel exploded in a cascade of blazing debris; the thick oil spilled across the flaming partition of the first bowl and formed an impenetrable cross of fire, isolating the grille opening from the rest of the room, segregating the furious Reevers from their prey.

“Quickly,” Aldwyn shouted, “we must get back through the tunnels to the daylight outside - it’s our only hope!”

He ducked under the grille opening and the darkness of the passageway swallowed him.

Ellis stooped to follow.

Through the writhing walls of orange flame, one of the Reevers howled and charged straight at Kira.

A panic of fear rooted her to the spot.

The Reever leapt into the flaming barrier; his angry momentum threatened to carry him through the bellowing fire; a fierce axe raised high, ready to crash through the burning obstruction and slice through her head.

It was too late.

There was no time.

She could not turn away or even scream.

The acid in the pit of her stomach froze.

Her heart thudded its goodbyes.

The numbing horror paralysed her thoughts.

Her shocked eyes stared at the pallid grey of his grizzly face, the black of his hair; waiting; waiting for the heaving axe to swing down and tear her in half.

His eyes burned a furious raging red, so close she could smell the hatred peel from his skin.

Her breath would not come.

Was this how it was to be dead?

She waited - but somehow the flames held him, suspended in the air, close to her face, just away from her vulnerable body.

His axe fell away behind him, harmless.

His appalled eyes sagged and hollowed; he gasped down at his chest. Kira followed his gaze, transfixed by his rageful glare.

Beris’s sword protruded out in front of her and was lodged in the Reever’s torso.

He yanked his blade away; the marauding Reever’s body collapsed back into the consuming roar of flames.

“That’s for Glwnn,” he said solemnly, staring down at his handiwork. “Now let’s get moving!”

His rough hands ushered Kira firmly toward the grille opening. She stooped and scrambled through, her mind still ablaze with the eyes of the Reever. Beris’s shadow flung itself before her and blocked off the roaring flames of the chamber behind. The dark silhouettes of Ellis and Aldwyn danced and darted quickly ahead.

The sudden sheltered stillness of the tunnel was broken by a sharp fizzing hiss which raced past her and clattered into the wall.

The sound rebounded and rattled to the floor.

Kira’s eyes strained to adjust against the calmed, cooled darkness, but she saw the spent arrow as she caught up with it, and forced her startled limbs to hurry.

Another acute hiss sliced into the confined stooping passageway.

It did not spark crisply into the brittle stone, but thudded aggressively

into something soft.

Beris cried out behind her.

Kira turned in a distressed panic.

Beris fell to his knees; even in the dark of the tunnel, his shocked face clearly aghast at his fate.

She dashed back to him, his gaunt features faded and diminished.

“I knew a girl would bring bad luck,” he gasped as he clutched her trembling hand.

His vacant eyes rolled to an empty gaze; his limp body flopped to the lifeless ground.

Kira held tightly to his strong fingers.

This was never meant to have happened.

Weren’t they here to stop the killing?

To help people?

To stop the witches and save the world?

And yet so many had died - even the Reevers.

His eyes had seemed almost human.

His terrified face, like that of the priest she saw, fleeing, frantic, at the Grove.

When would the trauma of these awful memories leave her?

When would it end?

A hand grabbed her shoulder forcefully from behind and jolted her back to the tunnel.

“Come on! Run!” Ellis urged her. “That oil won’t burn forever!”

Her faint legs seemed to sprint through the winding maze of tunnels, towards the hopeful safety of the daylight beyond, propelled by Ellis’s guiding push; but her mind raced even faster - awash with a puzzlement of unhappy, unanswered thoughts.