At first he thought it was just another boulder, albeit a tall and narrow one. Perhaps snow and rain had sheered part of it away, giving it that tall and narrow shape.
But no. When he got closer, he realized that it had been carved into that shape deliberately, and centuries of wind and weather had softened its shape until it looked like one of the natural boulders.
He came closer. There was writing on it—at least, he thought it must be writing, though the even rows of symbols were wholly unfamiliar.
There was one thing about the stele that was all-too understandable, however, though seeing it came as a complete and utter shock. Carved near the bottom was the glowering, horned, and fanged countenance of a Demon.
"Jermayan!"
Kellen's shout brought the Elven Knight at a run, sword drawn, with Shalkan close behind. Kellen pointed; he was very proud when his hand didn't shake.
Too much.
"Ah." The confusion and alarm eased from Jermayan's face. He peered at the inscription on the stone. "It is a marker, commemorating a great battle fought here, of an Allied triumph over the Demons."
Kellen stared around. Suddenly the empty hilltop seemed somehow populated, as if the armies that had once engaged here had not left.
Maybe they haven't. If any place should be haunted, it ought to be a place like this one.
"Of course, in those days this place had a different aspect," Jermayan reminded him, as if guessing the direction of Kellen's thoughts. "But come.
We will eat, and consider what route we may take on the morrow."
Jermayan turned and walked away. Kellen gazed after him. Jermayan seemed awfully calm about standing in the middle of an ancient battlefield, a place where Demons had actually set foot. He glanced at Shalkan, but for once the unicorn's expression was unreadable.
Grand. Making camp among the ghosts. I hope at least some of them are friendly.
"I guess we'd better go back," Kellen muttered. He cast a last look at the stele, and followed Jermayan.
Though there was not to be a sparring match that evening, that didn't save Kellen from a long lecture on the theory of combat, which was, in its way, just as helpful as actual physical practice. There was more to battle than hitting the enemy with a sword, he was coming to discover, just as there was more to magic than casting the most powerful spell you could manage. Just as knowing what spell would produce the best result with the least expenditure of personal power was important for a Wildmage, so, for a Knight (or a Knight-Mage), was being able to make your foe do what you wanted—flee or die—with the least risk to yourself and your allies.
"Glory and honor are important," Jermayan said sternly, "but they are not the most important things in the life of a knight. He must always keep his ultimate goal in his mind, and be prepared to sacrifice all other things to that goal. Perhaps even his honor, should such a choice be forced upon him."
Kellen nodded, but he knew his own choices weren't so simple. A Wildmage's personal honor involved always paying the price of his magic, no matter what that price might be. And to refuse to pay that price, as he had learned from Jermayan, would lead a Wildmage down the path of corruption, and into the service of the Demons of Shadow Mountain.
Kellen had the horrible suspicion that what that meant was that eventually a Wildmage would inevitably be called upon to betray one loyalty for another, and he didn't like that thought very much at all. Betray a friend who trusted you for the greater good? Betray a trust to keep a greater one? Betray a secret to save another? But try as he might, he couldn't see any way around it… if the need to do so ever came up.
Maybe it wouldn't.
He hoped it wouldn't.
How could he do that and ever feel clean again?
But the unpaid price of Jermayan's healing hung over his head, like a sharp sword suspended by the thinnest of threads, and all Kellen could do was worry about a potential disaster he could see no way to avert.
How did Idalia live with this sort of thing hanging over her all the time? How did other Knight-Mages?
How would he? Or would trying to resolve all the conflicts someday drive him mad?
Eventually their small fire burned low, and it was time for sleep. Despite the whirl of worries and fears chasing each other around and around inside his head, when Kellen laid himself down, weariness had its own way with him.
Will-he, will-he, he slept.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Visions of the past
HE WAS AWAKENED by the ring of swords against armor. Kellen threw himself out of his bedroll, staring around himself wildly. Beside the fire, Valdien and Jermayan still slept, undisturbed. Even Shalkan dozed unconcernedly.
"Kellen! They're breaking through!"
Someone was shouting his name. But even as Kellen looked in the direction of the call, he realized it was not him they were summoning. Or at least not the Kellen of here-and-now.
He saw with the strange doubling of Othersight, but instead of single objects, or a simple overlay of lines and symbols, as it usually was, this time it was as if he saw into a whole other world. All around him an army was gathered, beautiful and terrifying, and as in a dream, somehow the moment he saw a thing, he understood everything about it, as if he were seeing it and reading about it in a book at the same time. Part of him knew he hadn't moved at all, that he still lay asleep in his blankets, and did not stand upon the hillside, gazing into the sun.
There was a booming sound in the sky, as loud as a sudden crack of thunder, and when Kellen looked up, he saw that one of the dragons had launched itself into the sky.
Dragons?
He'd wanted to see a dragon. Now he had that wish.
It bore as much resemblance to the lizards of the forest as Shalkan did to a horse, and as little. Long sinuous neck, tail twice the length of its body, ending in a broad flat barb to help it to steer in the currents of the upper air.
As he watched, its spread wings caught and held the light, glowing like colored glass, for somehow Kellen was aware that even though it was still night where his body truly was, what he was seeing was taking place in the day. The plates of its underbelly—all he could see at this angle, as it caught an updraft and began circling higher—glowed like burnished metal.
And on its back rode the other-Kellen, the one to whom the summons had gone.
All around him the tide of battle surged. Though a part of his mind knew that this was dream or vision, nothing that could touch him now, it was so real that it was easy to forget and be swept up in the urgency that surrounded him, the screams and cries of embattled men and creatures.
All thought of Reality faded away as he looked around himself for familiar forms—for humans, Elves, unicorns—and saw none. To his left, a phalanx of towering figures in faceless red armor, twice as tall as a man, waded slowly into battle, swinging thick black clubs slowly before them and chanting rhythmically in deep rumbling voices. On his right, he heard a rumble of hooves, and turned to see a horde of bizarre cavalry rush forward, overtaking the giants. The animals were ponylike, but squatter and stockier, with cloven hooves, yellow eyes, and hairless skin and tails. They snapped and squealed at one another as they ran, like pigs or rats.
Their riders matched their mounts in a chilling way; just as stomach-churning, as bestial, and as terrifying. They were the size of children, but their bodies were thick and apelike with muscle, and their skins were the dark purple-grey of an old bruise. Protruding yellow teeth, like a forest boar's, deformed their mouths, giving their faces a brutish aspect, and their fingers ended in long hooked claws like a badger's. They were dressed in rough animal skins, with what looked like animal bones braided into their coarse black hair, and they howled maniacally as they rode. Each carried an iron hammer and a long hooked knife thrust through his belt, the weapons dark with old blood.
Were these the Allies of whom Jermayan had spoken so proudly? Kellen wondered in horror. He looked behind them, to where their General stood before his bright silken tent, its banners flowing proudly against the sky.
Saw the glorious ornamented armor—
Saw the wings—
And realized, with a disappointment too deep for despair, that the Kellen who fought here today, the Kellen who rode his dragon high above the battle, the dragonrider who shared his name…
Fought at the side of the Endarkened.
But he lost. Jermayan said they lost! Kellen told himself desperately.
Across the field, another dragon, then another, launched into the sky.