The Battlemage by Taran Matharu
“She can see heat,” Othello said proudly. “It’s like a switch in her mind. Hang on, let’s see…”
The stone changed again. The forest turned ghostly, replaced by a strange mass of rippling black-and-white shapes.
“Sound and air movement, like that bat demon.” Othello scrunched up his face as he tried to remember the name. “What’s it called…?”
Fletcher remembered the giant, hairy bats that some shamans would use as mounts, and shuddered.
“It doesn’t matter. Be quick,” Fletcher said. “A Pyrausta would rarely venture above the safety of the trees. If she’s spotted, it might look suspicious.”
Othello nodded, and soon Pria was skimming just above the tree line, occasionally flipping her vision to check for predators. Above, the red mountain range stretched into the horizon, devouring the graying sky. Fletcher found himself searching for a sun that he knew would not be there—the ether’s light source was yet to be determined.
“What’s that?” Othello murmured, slowing Pria as the base of the mountain neared. The trees stopped abruptly where the red rock began, as if the rusty sediment repelled them. Up close, it looked like sandstone, rough and covered in a thin layer of dust. It reminded Fletcher of the ether’s deadlands. But that was not what had caught Othello’s attention.
There was a crack in the rock, so narrow that they had not seen it in the distance. It appeared as if an earthquake had once split the impenetrable sierra down the center, leaving a thin trail into the heart of the range. It was barely wide enough for Sheldon to pass through, but it appeared well used; generations of hooves, claws and feet had worn a clear path along the ground.
“I told y—” Fletcher began, but suddenly Othello held up his hand, his eyes widening with panic.
“There’s something coming,” he whispered, as if he were there with Pria.
The screen flashed red as the Pyrausta darted onto a nearby boulder, the largest and tallest in a pile of rubble that lay scattered around the crack in the mountains. She flipped her vision to the strange, shadowy view of the world and turned her eyes to the horizon above the trees. There were ripples high in the air, as if there was a great disturbance in the sky.
Her view returned to normal, revealing a flock of V-shaped black shapes in the distance, still too far off to make out. At first, Fletcher thought they were bird demons, perhaps Shrikes. But as they drew closer he realized they were too large for that.
Wyverns. Fletcher could count seven of them—great, reptilian beasts with jointed wings and horned heads—that spiraled down toward the mountain pass. They were as large as a stack of three horses, and they landed in deep, juddering thuds that made the boulder tremble and the image on the crystal shake. Furrows were scored in the ground as they skidded to a stop, the hooked claws of their feet and wings tearing through the earth.
Othello shuddered as their riders came into view: orc shamans, resplendent in gaudy, feathered headdresses, their chests and limbs painted in whorls of bright colors. Each was armed with a quiver full of javelins and a macana, a flat war club with shards of obsidian embedded along the sides.
Other demons landed among them, lagging behind the Wyverns. Vesps, bee-wasp hybrids as large as pigeons. Strixs, four-legged owl-demons with red-tipped feathers and fearsome beaks. But it was another demon that caught Fletcher’s eye, still circling above as if reluctant to give up the search. It was smaller than a Wyvern, but his heart seized as the beast finally descended. It loomed large in the crystal as it landed on the boulder above Pria. The Pyrausta remained perfectly still.
“Crap,” Cress muttered.
It was an Ahool, the name Othello had been searching for earlier coming unbidden to Fletcher’s mind. It was much like an overgrown bat with the musculature, fur and wide mouth of a silverback gorilla, snorting at the air through a piggish snout and twitching its pointed ears. Twin fangs poked from either side of its mouth, sharper than hypodermic needles but long enough to skewer a human through the chest and out the other side.
Then its rider leaped from its back to land in a crouch on the ground below.
The white orc. Khan.
“Heaven help us,” Cress breathed.
Khan seemed to be shouting, his pearlescent skin bright against the gray sky. His long mane of hair tossed in the air as he strode back and forth, ordering the shamans down from their mounts in what Fletcher knew would be the guttural barks of the orc language.
The shamans were soon prowling about the clearing, examining the ground by the mountain pass. It did not take long for the orcs to determine there were no footprints, though they did seem excited by the hoof marks left along the dust. The white orc clapped his hands at the sight of them, then shooed the shamans away to examine them himself. They returned to their Wyverns and fed them red slabs of meat from baskets strapped to the demons’ backs.
“Hey … they’re not leaving,” Cress said, pointing at the crystal.
The shamans were not setting up tents, but instead sheltering beneath the wings of their Wyverns and starting small campfires with the fire spell symbols tattooed on their fingertips. Khan joined one of them, crouching on his long haunches and warming his hands by the flames.
“Why is Khan here?” Sylva shuddered, horrified at the sight of the tall, white orc. “There’s a war on in our dimension, and he’s wasting his time hunting us here. It doesn’t make sense!”
Khan wore nothing but a plain loincloth, a stark contrast to the colorful shamans, with their multicolored feathers and garish body paint. His body was composed of lean, athletic muscle, and his long hair seemed almost feminine alongside the shamans’ cropped mix of topknots, shaved patches and bowl tops.
“What do I do?” Othello whispered, pointing at the image of the Ahool on the crystal. It was standing sentry, its head swinging slowly left and right. “As soon as Pria moves, it’ll sense her. Hell, I’m surprised it hasn’t smelled her yet.”
“Ahools have poor eyesight,” Sylva said. “It probably can smell her but can’t see where she is.”
“We need her there anyway,” Fletcher suggested. “If they’re still there by morning we could run right into them. She can keep watch.”
“Aye,” Othello said, wiping sweat from his forehead.
The group sat in horrified silence as the sky began to dim and the smaller orc demons settled on the edges of the forest, watching for danger.
CHAPTER
12
BY MORNING THE ORCS WERE GONE. Pria saw them leave at first light, flying low through the mountain pass. It had been fortunate timing, as Sheldon arrived at the entrance an hour later. Once there, the Zaratan stopped to graze at the edge of the forest, as if he knew that there would be little vegetation to feed on during the journey ahead.
The team leaped to the ground and spread out, wary of any orc demons left to keep watch. The ashes of the fires were still warm to the touch and the dung from their Wyverns left a thick, pungent stench in the air.
“They must know we’re going this way,” Fletcher said, shaking his head. “The Ahool must have tracked our scent. We’re just lucky they thought we’re faster than we are—they’ve overshot us.”
“If we were walking we would still be in the swamplands,” Othello said, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. “If we were riding anything but a Zaratan, say Kirins or Hippalectryons, we would be well beyond this point. They must think we’re mounted, like the Dragoon Corps.”
“That’s why they were so excited by these hoofprints,” Sylva guessed, crouching near the same indentations the shamans had examined. “Lucky for us, a wild herd of some demon or other must have passed this way.”
“Aye,” Cress agreed. She prodded a pile of Wyvern dung with a twig. “They must think we’ve got large, high-level demons we can ride—it’s not like they’d send a bunch of students with one or two years of experience into the belly of the beast, is it?”
Fletcher grinned at her sarcasm, even if inside he was in turmoil. It didn’t
As if Sheldon could read his mind, the Zaratan swallowed the last of the pulped leaves he had been stripping from the forest edge and began to plod into the narrow gully, ignoring the high, sheer walls of the mountain on either side. The team hurried to heave themselves onto the shell, their feet dangling above the ground as it juddered, tilting to and fro.
Soon they had returned to Sheldon’s back with Alice, who now had Tosk joining the pile of demons that draped themselves over her, as if they took solace in her calm demeanor. Ignatius even brought her scraps of jerky when the team ate and spent most of his time in her lap—now that the fire was out, his temperature had gone back to normal.
Cress did not seem to mind her demon’s new sleeping companion—she spent most of her time behind Sheldon’s neck, giving him the occasional scratch and holding one-sided conversations. She had become quite attached to the gentle giant and often bemoaned the fact that he was too high a level to make her own.
Fletcher smiled at the affectionate pile of demons and kissed his mother on the forehead. As he walked to the front of the shell, he wondered if it was strange to show such tenderness toward her. But it felt natural, and right.
“It’s the perfect place for an ambush,” Sylva said, interrupting his thoughts as she came to stand beside him.
She was right. They were in a winding chasm that followed the natural strata of the rock, with jagged turns that prevented them from seeing more than a dozen yards ahead. Above, deformations in the cliff walls created ledges and crevices, ideal for Wyverns hidden in wait.
“We’ll have Pria keep watch,” Fletcher said. “That will give us some warning at least.”
Only Pria would be unknown as one of their demons, for the others might have been identified by the Nanaues or goblins they had fought in the pyramid. Othello brushed her with the large scrying stone and handed it to Fletcher. The dwarf was reluctant to be away from her; he had spent the past hour experimenting with her transformations, amazed at the myriad patterns she could produce on her carapace.
As Pria hovered before them, Fletcher found it strange to see himself mirrored in the crystal, and he was struck by the change in his appearance.
His clothes and face were stained with a mess of soil, blood and dried sweat—he had not washed in days, limited to a brief splashing of water from the acrid puddles that Sheldon passed by. What wasn’t stained was torn from being caught on the spiky branches of the orc jungles and the ether’s forests. His hair was greasy, plastered to his forehead as if dipped in tar.
He smoothed his hair back, then wiped at his cheeks surreptitiously, until he earned himself an amused glance from Sylva. She had somehow managed to keep herself presentable. Her face was clean and fresh, while her hair was carefully braided, even if her clothes were only in marginally better condition than his own.
“Come here,” she said, pulling Fletcher to sit cross-legged beside her. She poured a splash of water onto a scrap of reasonably clean cloth and dabbed at his face with it, peering at him with her tongue poking from the corner of her lips as she worked.
“You know, we won’t have many options if there’s no volcano on the other side of these mountains,” she said in a low voice.
“I didn’t think we had any options,” Fletcher replied, unsure where to look as she leaned in as she wiped his cheeks. He noticed her skin, usually pale and smooth, was lightly bronzed with a dusting of freckles, tanned from her days in the orc jungles.
“We’ll have to risk flying to search for one,” she murmured, shuffling closer so the others couldn’t hear. “Take some petals for the journey.”
“Abandon the others?” Fletcher asked, horrified.
“We’d bring the flowers back once we’ve found a volcano,” Sylva said, shaking her head. “It’s our only chance, and theirs. We split up to go hunting when we needed food the other day; this is just a little longer.”
“How will we find each other again?” Fletcher asked. “We won’t be a few hundred yards apart this time.”
“We’ll find a way,” Sylva said, furrowing her brow.
Fletcher shook his head. He didn’t want to leave his mother. But it was the only way.
“Well, let’s hope it doesn’t come to that,” he said.
As he spoke, he realized that he had been ignoring the crystal in his lap and glanced down. What he saw churned his stomach.
“Guys, you need to see this,” he said, his heart pounding.
Even as he said it, he knew it was too late—Sheldon had just stomped around a curve in their path and the walls of the ravine fell away, revealing what Pria had seen moments ago.
A canyon. A huge, empty space widening the ravine and then narrowing again, far in the distance on the opposite side. But that was not what had alarmed him.
Giant bones towered above, scattered about like the ruined pillars of a forgotten temple. They were thick and tall as tree trunks, each one bleached a glaring white by years of exposure to light.
“What is this place?” Sylva breathed, her neck tilting as they passed beneath a rib cage. The bones curved around them like the spars of a grounded frigate, casting bars of shadow over the group.
Ahead, a leering skull greeted them, the lower jaw missing to leave its ridged teeth buried in the sand. It was as wide and tall as Sheldon’s entire body, with eye sockets large enough for Lysander to fly through without touching the sides. Other skulls littered the way, revealing that scores of demons had died in the huge ravine.
“It’s like an elephants’ graveyard,” Othello said. He leaned out and knocked one of the bones, the hollow sound of it echoing around the canyon.
“These are no elephants,” Cress said.
Indeed, they were not. These demons were many times an elephant’s size. Fletcher couldn’t imagine how they had arrived in this place, for they could hardly have fitted through the ravine. Pria, still traveling ahead, had reached the other side of the chasm, and he saw the answer to his question. The path was far wider there, large enough to sail a fleet of ships through.
“There was nothing this large described in our demonology lessons,” Sylva said, still horrified by the size of the enormous skeletons.
“I know what these could be,” Othello volunteered hesitantly. “There are legends about creatures this size, but never any confirmed sightings. Some people say they’re extinct. I read about them in an old book in the library, when we were studying for the exams last year.”
He looked closer at the skull as they passed it by.
“The teeth are a herbivore’s, flat and ridged,” he said, thinking aloud. “Look at its shinbones. From its size, it would be tall enough to graze on the canopy. They’re the tree-eaters. Behemoths.”
“Whatever they are, it’s creepy as hell here.” Cress shuddered and went to sit beside Alice, who seemed completely unperturbed by the macabre graveyard.
They spent the next half hour on edge, but the land was as dead and motionless as the bones that surrounded them. Even so, it was a relief when they passed out of the silent boneyard and into the wide ravine on the other side.
Sheldon was quickening his pace, as if eager to reach the edge of the mountains. He would be dehydrated, for though the others were able to drink from their flasks, his last taste of water had been from a stagnant puddle in the forest that morning. To add to this, the weather had changed—the sky had become brighter and hotter with each passing minute.
The shell swayed beneath them, and the cliffs on either side were now too wide apart to provide cover from the oppressive heat that beat down from the glowing sky above. Soon they had lapsed into s
Then they saw it, shining bright like a sheet of glass, rippling and swirling in the scrying stone as Pria flew out of the wide mountain pass.
It was a lagoon, with leagues of azure waters that were surrounded by pure white sand and rocky, vine-laden cliffs. Green jungles bordered its edges, and a winding waterway stretched to their left toward the faraway ocean, running beside the mountain range until it merged with the distant waters. To the right, trickling waterfalls fell from jutting outcrops of black rock, feeding the calm pools that surrounded them.
Even as Sheldon hastened toward it, the air began to turn humid, so much so that Cress’s loose red hair began to frizz before Fletcher’s eyes. Sheldon unleashed a groan of happiness, and the shell bounced as he lumbered ahead, the walls of the mountain falling away on either side.
“I think we’ve arrived at his destination,” Cress said happily, ducking out of the cover of the pelt and crawling to the front of the shell. She patted his neck happily and then laughed aloud as he splashed into the water, spraying her. The Zaratan languished there, burying his head beneath the surface. His neck pulsed as he gulped.
Cress scooped her hand over the edge and cupped it to her lips.
“It’s sweet! We can drink it.”
Fletcher didn’t need more encouragement than that. He ran and leaped into the water, for it was so clear that he could see the bottom. There was a shock of cold, but soon the cool liquid was heavenly on his skin, bathing his greasy scalp to leave his hair floating weightlessly.
The water was disturbed nearby as Sylva dove in beside him, a streak of white cloth and bubbles in the water. She had stripped to her undershirt and the short, knee-length pantalets she wore beneath her breeches.
Fletcher came up for air, only to find himself splashed in the face by the laughing elf.