5

  Under Valinor Palace, as war bells pealed, shaking the city above:

  They fought like they had in that accursed drow arena, but this time with Korvin’s prescient guidance, and with magical aid from Marika and Princess Genevera. Against four enraged skin-changers, the elves needed all of the help they could get.

  There wasn’t much room to spread out in that blood-spattered tunnel crossroads. Anyone forced into a side-passage would have been stranded, so they stayed together, heeding Korvin’s alerts and the spy-eye’s green streamers of light.

  Alexion fought with more courage than planning, back-to-back with Galadin (who was one blazing god from death, the whole time). The two had a natural rhythm, attacking and shielding by turns, reflexively.

  Mikale was rock-solid muscle, having next to no manna except when he belted out drinking songs. He fought like a rampaging owl-bear, laying around himself with a tornadic, seven-foot sword.

  Meanwhile, Zesha and Alain harried their shape-changing foes with repeated, sapping strikes, drawing blood, hamstringing, blinding. In and out, too fast to get caught.

  Freys was their on-the-spot healer and battle mage. His missiles and draining spells weakened the enemy, giving the skin-changers no rest at all. His blessings closed wounds and reversed poison, when talons or fangs raked the flesh of his allies.

  More than that, the former slaves fought as a team who’d learned early to win at all costs, while entertaining a vicious and fickle mob. Taking a wound for the resultant shock and sympathy could lead to a shower of potions, or a critical weapons upgrade. They’d won battles that way in the past, but there was no screaming audience, here.

  Also, they weren’t alone. Panya’s magic proved crucial, for she could wrap any one creature in a bubble of seawater, binding and drowning the monster ( at least, until it changed shapes). That trapped, wounded manticore turned itself into a baby tarrasque, proof against almost anything. The barghest was already dead, speared on Mikale’s giant sword and then hoisted into the air to slide down its blade in a welter of dripping blood and foul curses.

  The chuul and sea-serpent sprang behind their massive sibling, changing forms as they went. Marika launched daggers of ice and summoned a freezing gale from the mountains of home, battering a would-be flier out of the air. Freys winked at her, giving Marika his fighting arena high-sign.

  They were forcing the creatures back. Beating them. Then the skin-changers shifted tactics. As one, they released a blaze of demonic manna, uniting themselves with a horrible clamor of popping joints, shredded flesh and gurgling screams. All at once, that infant tarrasque had three heads and a sudden forest of lashing, clawed arms. It swelled to block the entire crossroads, with a scant three feet of clearance over its horned central head.

  Korvin couldn’t keep up, seeing all of the danger at once, except for threats to himself. Edging around the monster’s rear, trailed by his hovering book, Korvin shouted,

  “Lex, beside you! Three paces right…”

  Concerned for his brother, Korvin failed to dodge that whipping blade of a tail. It struck like a thunderbolt, as the creature roared with all three of its heads. Korvin smashed into the tunnel wall, left leg torn off at the knee, jetting blood. The impact knocked him unconscious at once, as Panya, Freys and the spy-eye rushed to his aid.

  Marika ran block; coating that slashing long tail in a heavy boulder of ice, freezing it solid. Then,

  “It isn’t a real tarrasque,” shouted Galadin, with Firelord’s insight. “The beast isn’t invulnerable! Spread out and take off those heads!”

  Easy to say, harder to do, with two of their mages out of the fight and no room at all to maneuver. Alexion signaled ‘cover me’, getting an answering nod from Galadin. Then, with a running start, the muscular elf leapt through that tangle of clawed limbs, between two of its heads and onto the creature’s spiked back.

  He landed lightly, with a theatrical flourish that always worked on the drow (till it didn’t). Twin heads crashed together right over him, sounding like a collapsing mountainside. Alexion skidded out of their way avoiding a rain of dropped fangs. Next, he cut savagely downward, magically strengthened and shielded by Galadin.

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  The point of his sword plunged between two of the monster’s leathery armor plates, but not deeply enough to slaughter the rampaging beast. Drek!

  Wrenching his blade free, Alexion straightened to find himself surrounded by dozens of fresh sprouted, elf-seeking tentacles. He would have been seized and shredded like paper, except for Galadin’s shielding and fire-bolts.

  Then Zesha and Alain somersaulted up from either side to flank their embattled teammate. Alain had been just a toddler, back then, but he’d watched every fight through the slave-pen grating, held close by an old human bard. He knew all their moves, all the signs, every trick. Together, the lad and his mother helped fight off the monster’s tentacles. Freed, Alexion hewed at its central head with powerful strokes of his blade.

  Then Mikale thumped up, skidding to a halt in front of the stamping and roaring tarrasque. Filling his lungs, he started an off-key rendition of “Twenty-five Bottles of Ale”. (It was the only song he knew, one that frequently got the whole crowd laughing and clapping along). Mikale could do magic when singing, as long as he wove his spells into the lyrics.

  “Twenty-Five bottles of ale are good friends!

  Crack open the floor as pit-ward we send!

  Raise another for me, all you folk!

  Drop it right on its master, um… covered in yolk!”

  Powerful manna crackled and flared, warping reality. Alexion, Zesha and Alain leapt clear just in time. Galadin seized Mikale’s belt as the stone floor cracked in half and collapsed, level by level, all the way down. The composite monster twisted and bellowed, coming apart once again. Next, drenched in a sudden flood of sticky gold muck, it fell through that yawning gap.

  “Another verse!” shouted Galadin, shaking Mikale by his straining sword-belt. “This one to close the drekt hole!”

  “Erm… Twenty-five bottles of ale are my brothers!

  They seal up this floor, just like all the others!

  Hoist a flagon for us, one and all!

  Harden the ground and raise up a… wall!”

  Stone clattered and slammed, snapping shut once again like a trap, then mounding up into a low, rocky barrier. Not very well built. Mikale was no architect, and he could only create what he could easily visualize. But the skin-changers’ howls were abruptly cut off, leaving only whispered spells and harsh breathing, for the space of three heartbeats. Then…

  “Covered in yolk?” Galadin demanded, still spraying flame from a score of punctures and cuts. “That’s the best you could do?”

  Someone elbowed the scowling elf-lord aside. Zesha, who gave him a fond pat, going by.

  “Would it kill you to learn a new song, Mik?” she joked; bruised and bloody, but whole. Beside his fawn-haired mother, Alain just about glowed, having fought alongside his heroes, at last.

  Mikale shrugged miserably.

  “There was all that pressure,” mumbled the tall, dark-haired elf. “And it isn’t the same without crowd noise! I need applause!”

  “You need a voice transplant,” snapped Galadin, pulling all three of them into a fierce and sudden embrace.

  Meanwhile, Panya and Freys stabilized Korvin with spells, borrowing manna from Genna, Marika and Lex. The future emperor knelt down to gently cradle his wounded brother.

  “Kori,” he murmured. “Little Guy, you have some of that healing spring water tucked into your pockets. Allow me access. Guide me, and I will dose us all, starting with you and Dino.”

  But the unconscious scholar couldn’t respond. Genevera turned back into herself with a flash of emerald light. Crouching down on the buckled stone floor, she took her father’s cold hand.

  “Dadness,” whispered the girl. “It’s me. It’s Genna. We need your help.”

  Up until then, the brown-haired imperial princess had stayed utterly calm. Her father’s shorn leg and his fallen book had not cracked her resolve. Now, though, she started to cry.

  “Please wake up, Dadness! Not you, too! I can’t lose you and Dickie, both!”

  Marika glided across to place a hand on her daughter’s slim shoulder, handing over the crumpled tear-web. Close by their side, Panya was searching, hard. All of Midworld’s free waters were hers to command, as an heir of the Old Blood… but the healing springs were tightly warded and out of her reach, unless she could find one that hadn’t been claimed, yet.

  Freys’ muttered spells kept the wounded prince alive, but they couldn’t pull him to consciousness. Not quite. Genevera sucked in a deep, ragged breath, barely hearing the mage's spell. She took the web that Valness had given her back in the cave. Though over a day had passed since he’d swept up her tears with its magical cloth, the web hadn’t dried out. Maybe it wouldn’t, until all of that sorrow was gone. Reaching past Unkeror, Genna dabbed at her father’s broken face with it.

  “All of my wishes for His Dadness,” she said to whichever spirits or powers might answer a desperate girl. “Let him wake up, please. Let him get well.”

  On the scale of miracles, it wasn’t that much, but all at once they could see Korvin’s tidy faerie pockets, laid out in precise, runic order, fading back into infinite distance.

  “Hagalaz, for Healing Water,” mumbled Alexion, sorting those open boxes for one particular rune.

  “Or Wyn, for just Water,” suggested Panya, leaning anxiously forward.

  Neither one, as it turned out. The cask had been filed under ‘Sowilo’, for Spring. Anyhow, Alexion found the right wooden cask and then drew it carefully out of his brother’s extradimensional pockets. He opened its lid with a tense invocation, then dipped up enough to dribble on Korvin’s slack mouth and torn-away leg.

  In that age of manna and wonders, with a god standing by and an enchanted tear-web at work…

  Maybe they got what they needed. Maybe a book lifted off the stone floor, while Korvin opened his eyes and sat up.