Chapter 16

Mark and Talia Translocated back to the Xervian port of The Sea People and resumed their position floating in the focus of the smaller reflector, both of them soaking up power like the warmth of a hot shower after a cold day.

“They’re leaving.” Povon reported from Hilia with obvious relief.

“Thanks.” Mark told her with a grim smile. “We can see that from here, actually.”

The Xervian Wards were only a hundred yards offshore here, and Mark and Talia were only sixty yards back from the beach, so when two billion or so Sylvan and dragons appeared outside the Wards and began blasting at it with everything they had, they appeared like a colossal living wall across the world spewing fire and light, and a frighteningly close one too.

Suddenly Holanam arrived in mid-air beside them, and yelped at the sight.

“Is there any particular reason why you decided to join us?” Mark asked. “As you can see, this might not be the safest place right now.”

“Ya. Iski said I should, and she’s our best precog. You’ll probably need some extra luck, and I think I’m getting good at it. Can you tell what I’m doing?”

“Yes. Your power isn’t just making you glow like elves usually do. It’s making a whole area glow for about ten feet around, including around Talia and I.”

“That’s my luck field. I’m pretty sure it is, anyway.”

“After what we just went through, we’ll take it.” Talia nodded.

“Yeah. It was pretty weird back at Zarkog’s mountain after you left too. Balen was in a five foot wide sphere of Shielding, and this dragon blew up right above her and covered it with so much dragon guts she couldn’t see out, and she vomited in her bubble and was stuck in there with it. She kept fighting though. She’s a little toughie, she is. I don’t think he was one of ours, the dragon that is, even though he was pretty big. I sure hope he wasn’t one of ours.”

He shivered a bit, and Talia gave him as tender a hug as their armor would allow.

Yazadril suddenly joined them. “Are you kids okay?”

“Yes, we’re fine. None of our people were killed.” Talia assured him, and shared a hug with him too.

“Good to hear.” he nodded, and turned to watch the Serminakis. “We didn’t get Zarkog, but we think we wounded him, and other than that almost everything else is going our way. He didn’t get you either. We estimate he lost at least seven thousand of his best spell-casters when the Wards in Venak went down, and another thirty thousand that minded the Sylvan Barrier, and perhaps sixty thousand more on the Wards around Serminak. And from what we saw when those Wards went down, he likely lost all manner of emplacements, personnel and infrastructure that was situated on his coast next to the Wards. He lost as much as all of that in the actual battle, and we only lost one for every seventeen of his.

“The Venaks have dumped the bodies of a few dozen Sylvan and twenty dragons into the harbor, as well as a few hundred humans. We suspect that there has been a change of regime there, and that King Renem is one of the ones now floating in Cartyop Bay. And since most of the Sylvan and Dragons stationed there have remained there, we think they may have joined the insurrection, though we have no idea whether they’re still loyal to Zarkog. On the other hand, they seem to be well hunkered-down behind their defenses and none have joined our battle with Serminak on either side, so we can still hope they’ve decided to remain neutral for the duration.

“We suffered an amazingly small amount of casualties in the battle, and we got out with all our fallen and our wounded. The inclusion of our entire force in a compound Link was a crucial breakthrough.

“There’s a good chance that these here are all he has left who’re capable of Translocating. And right now, all of these fools are here attacking these Wards in order to get at you, which is a futile effort, instead of attacking one of our less well-protected positions. Meanwhile our wounded are being treated, our Translocation and Flight medallions are being recharged, and with every minute that passes, our nations are more prepared to repel invaders.”

“Their efforts are truly futile?” Talia asked. “They cannot break through these Wards?”

“There’s enough of them that they could do it if they went about it the right way, but they’re not.”

None of them faced each other as they spoke; instead they watched the endless wall of attackers.

“This is weird, just floating here while two billion enemies try to kill us from a stone’s throw away.” Holanam observed nervously, and the others had no response to that. “Especially with the way the Wards here are completely invisible. Not even a ripple when lightning hits it.”

After a pair of minutes, Mark asked; “Is there anything else we should be doing right now?”

“Actually, that’s what I came here to ask.” Yazadril chuckled. “Nemia’s helping Hilsith see to the wounded. I was sent on behalf of The Just Alliance to see if you had any suggestions.”

“No, the only idea I have is to wait till noon at Focus Mountain, have the Xervians open a corridor in their Wards from the west coast to there, and blast the hell out of this bunch after we lead them in. After I put this piece of the reflector back, of course. We’ll see how they like fighting in the middle of Death’s Teeth.”

“Ah. Well it is a good plan, if not a solution to our overall strategic situation. Oh well, I guess we can’t depend on you for everything.”

“No, but I’ll let you know if I think of anything.”

“Could you do us a favor, Father? Could you see if we can have some repair done on our Wards at Hilia? They took quite a beating.”

“They didn’t crack the ones The High People gave you, did they?”

“No, nor the Xervian ones, but those two layers were the last ones left.”

“Ah. Good to know. I’ll see what I can do.” Yazadril nodded. “I’ll be listening in case you need anything else, or just to talk.”

“Thanks, us too.” Talia said, and with a quick kiss for his daughter, Yazadril was gone.

They floated there for another fifty minutes, and then all of the Serminakis stopped attacking the Wards. The black dragon and his bronze companion who had directed the hunt for them appeared, opposite the barrier from where Mark, Talia and Holanam floated. They appeared to be yelling in anger at all about them, though the sound of it was blocked by the Wards. They organized perhaps thirty thousand spell-casters in concentric rings centered on a spot in the Wards about nine hundred feet up, and then they all cast a spell on it. A red beam appeared between the spot they cast on and the distant horizon.

“Did my eyes deceive me, or did that ray shoot away from the Wards?” Holanam asked.

“It did.” Mark nodded. “It looks like they’ve finally decided to go about it the right way, as Yazadril would say.”

“Instead of attacking the Wards with all their power, they’re draining power out of them.” Talia stated with grudging admiration, even as millions of Sylvan and dragons started adding their efforts to the spell.

The red beam thickened and brightened considerably, and kept on doing so.

“Somonik?” Mark asked. “You might want to look at this.”

“We see it. A worrying sight. That power drain is a straight line, venting horizontally, and while it eventually reaches the void, it is out of sight due to distance while still within the atmosphere. I have dispatched a team to intercept it beyond our enemies’ vision. They will attempt to recapture the energy and feed it back into our Wards without the enemy’s knowledge. However, it appears doubtful that they will succeed before the Wards are holed. Ours are not of a nature to fail catastrophically, but if the enemy continues as they are, they can eventually open a hole large enough to allow some number of them to pass within, and onto Xervian soil.

“If you wish to make a stand there, we will assign the necessary personnel to hold the breach. The enemy will be in a tactically disastrous position, having to hold the hole open and deploy through it into our concentrated fire.”

“No, not yet. We’ve got to find a way to end this war, so I’d like to avoid further bloodshed if at all possible. We’ll buy some time. Try to find a way to hunt down Zarkog, as I’m sure we’re already trying to do. If nothing else, we have to hold down the death toll as much as possible, on both sides. Sooner or later we’ll all have to turn our attention to the demons, and we have to find a way to get this horde on our side before then.

“How long till they’re through?”

“Four minutes till they can pass a Sylvan through the hole, fourteen for a dragon, at their present pace. But they’ll be able to cast a spell through it in less than a minute.”

“Well, I’m replenished enough that I’m starting to sweat.” Mark stated. “How about we see if these guys can chase us all over the world as well as they chased us all over Serminak?”

“One moment.” Talia said with a thoughtful look. “Somonik, I imagine you know a great number of Translocation references.”

“I do.”

“Would you give them to me? We’ll want to have as many prepared choices as we can get.”

“I will.”

“Thank you. We’ll stay available for communications.”

“You’re welcome. I’ll try to keep you abreast of developments. The Just Alliance appreciates the risk you will take in order to hold our enemies’ attention. Be assured that we will make full use of the time this grants us.”

“Hold on a moment.” Mark said. “Holanam, how many references can you keep in mind at once?”

“Maybe a dozen.”

“All right. Talia, give him ten random references. Holanam, you pick one of them at random. Got it?”

“Yup.”

“All right, we’ll just see where your luck leads us. You pick our destinations at random, and when we should go. We’ll cast the Translocations, and you trigger them. All right, here we go.”

They appeared a moment later over open ocean in the dark.

“Are they following us?” Mark asked.

“They have ended their assault on our Wards.” Somonik assured them. “We will take steps to ensure that the same method will not be effective again. Take care.”

“Thanks.” Mark told him as the white dragon closed the Link.

Then there was nothing but the stars above and the ocean below, and the wind.

“I wonder why Somonik would have a Translocation reference to a place in the middle of the ocean?” Talia mused.

“Only one reason I can think of.” Mark grinned. “Good fishing.”

“I’m so scared.” Holanam stated a moment later, and Talia pulled him over so that she stood between the two males with an arm around each.

“We are too, my friend.” Mark told him.

“Yeah? You don’t act like it.”

“It’s the training. When you’ve trained as a warrior in the manner I did, you fully expect that there’ll be days, or even weeks or months, when you’re scared to death all the time. Having a few years to get ready for constantly having the crap scared out of you makes it a lot easier to deal with. It’s the most important part of the training, learning to deal with fear. But no one can eliminate it, and they’d be foolish to do so if they could.”

“Ah. I could’ve been a knight by now if I’d wanted to, but I never did. It seemed like too much work, really. The scholar’s easy life for me, I thought, little did I know. There wasn’t much that was scholarly about our little jaunt to Serminak today.”

“True, but the world will need to know what happened today, so it’s lucky that there were scholars there and taking part. You can make a good account of the truth of it, in years ahead when there’s less to do.”

“I could do that.” Holanam nodded. “Maybe we should go soon.”

“Any time you want.” Talia smiled. “Pick somewhere.”

“All right. Let’s go.” Holanam smiled.

Sylvan and dragons appeared all around them, and one Sylvan was right in front of them and facing them, so close that Talia could have reached out and touched her. A fraction of a second later Talia’s Translocation took effect, even as Mark reached for his sword and Holanam yelled in panic.

They emerged over the stark mountains of southwestern Kletiuk, muscles tensed and hearts pounding.

“Sweet Mother that was close!” Mark cursed.

A second later Holanam started to chortle. “I wonder if we looked as surprised as that Sylvan? She looked like she was ready for a heart cramp!”

Another second and the three of them were laughing almost hysterically, and they did so for almost a minute.

Suddenly Holanam stopped laughing and pushed the bangs of his black hair out of his brown eyes as two dragons appeared in the valley far below them, so far away that they could barely be seen to be a black and a bronze. He triggered the next Translocation without another word.

They appeared over a jungle three hundred leagues to the north, only fifty feet in the air, and were warmed by a late-afternoon tropical breeze.

“They’ll never give up you know.” Holanam stated nervously. “Dragons are like that. As long as the order to get you stands, and even after that if they start to take it personally. They’ll keep hunting you for a thousand years, or a million if you live that long and that’s what it takes, until they get you or you die.”

“Or until we get them.” Mark countered. “We’re pretty fresh right now, and we could take those two spotters if we wanted to. If it comes to it, we will. But as long as they’re all wasting their time chasing us, they’re not hurting anyone else.”

“That’s right.” Holanam nodded as he glanced around at their surroundings. “Somonik probably came here for hunting. Doesn’t he go anywhere where there’s people?”

“I haven’t been passing you any references to places close to settlements or within Wards.” Talia explained. “We don’t want our pursuers to endanger anyone else, but we don’t want them to lose interest in the chase either. So we’ll just keep touring the wilderness of Kellaran for as long as we can. Then we’ll either go to Xervia or The Nine Valleys and rest up behind their Wards for the next round.

“That’s why your luck could be so important.” Mark agreed. “Not so we can escape our pursuers, but so we can remain just out of their reach while remaining safe, tantalizing them for as long as we can. But it’s likely to be scary a few times, and we’ll probably have more close scrapes. You don’t have to stay with us if you’d rather not.”

“I have to stay with you, for my vow of service and Princess Alilia’s Compulsion, and for my own self-respect.”

“And we’re glad to have you.” Talia told him with a warm smile.

“Thanks. Say, I have some good hiking rations, dried fruit and nuts and whatnot. Shall we have breakfast?”

“Certainly.” Talia chuckled. “And to add to our menu, we can have a few things left over from yesterday’s breakfast.”

“Excellent!” Mark chortled. “Let’s make a production of it! If our pursuers catch a glimpse of it, it’ll vex them for sure!”

And so it happened that when the black and the bronze appeared as distant specks high above, it was to observe their quarry lounging on a huge white silk tablecloth that was scattered with glinting silver dishes and pitchers and centered by a twelve-flame candelabra, leisurely enjoying a fine repast. The rest of their pursuers enjoyed the merest glance of this spectacle when the horde arrived, just before their dining prey vanished. They were to enjoy this brief view another twenty-seven times over the next hour and a half as the big human and the two elves took their time with their meal. Then they became ghosts again, and the psionicists in Serminak’s mobile forces were frustrated to have to find them over and over again, only to arrive there a fraction of a second after those they sought had fled.

Still, the interval needed to re-acquire their targets became gradually shorter as they shaved a bit of time from every repetition, though the chase now ranged over the entire surface of Kellaran. While they had needed almost three minutes to verify Mark and Talia’s location when the pursuit began on the east coast of Xervia, ten hours later they had it down to fifty seconds on the average.

Grakonexikaldoron had convinced Mark of the inadvisability of luring the enemy to Focus Mountain and fighting them there at noon, pointing out that the reflector and the new facilities on the north rim were almost certain to be destroyed in the battle.

Now Mark and Talia’s energies were ebbing from having cast so many Translocations, and he and Talia had not had sufficient sleep the night before. He suffered from this more than she did, since elves require less sleep than humans, and he was becoming a bit groggy.

“Why are they chasing us with so many?!” Holanam asked in exasperation, after one particularly close call. “I mean, their numbers look to have dwindled to a third of their original force over the last few hours, I imagine because a lot of them have expended their power or become exhausted. But why chase us with so many in the first place?! I know you two are incredibly powerful, but you wouldn’t have a chance against even a thousand dragons if they catch us. So why chase us at the beginning with fifty million dragons, and some two billion Sylvan besides?!”

“In case they catch us, and the Strike Force of The Just Alliance comes to our aid, I imagine.” Talia ventured. “The Alliance tried for Zarkog with everything we could bring to bear, and we failed. If he can succeed at catching us, it will do a lot towards giving him the upper hand in the minds of the populace.”

“I dunno.” Mark said tiredly. “We’re told the Dragon Lord was probably injured, and he must have been mighty upset at our attack on him, and at us of the Six leading a quarter of his forces on a merry chase all over Serminak. I picture him retiring to his lair to recover and get some rest, and just before he slams the door in his subordinates faces, he yells something like; ‘Get the Keys to The Just Alliance, all of you! I want them dead!’

“So now they’re all chasing us, even though it’s a totally wasteful misuse of his resources.”

“Let’s go.” Holanam said, and triggered their next jump across the world just as the horde appeared around them.

“They’re even less now.” Mark commented as they appeared over the north coast of Felion. “I’m getting pretty tired, but I’d bet that they’ll all have to give it up before us. We still have power for a few hundred jumps. If they don’t give it up in the next hour or so, we’ll try to find a place to hide for a few hours’ rest.”

But nineteen minutes later, above the vast ice fields of northern Debivin, the Dragon Lord himself appeared only ten yards away, surrounded by his dwindled but still vast mobile forces. His close appearance was shocking, as it came only twenty-one seconds after Holanam had triggered their last Translocation. Mark triggered their next jump in a panic as Zarkog blasted them with his prodigious fire.

Talia cast their Shields as they arrived above the plains some eight hundred leagues to the south. They’d felt an instant of pain on their exposed skin from Zarkog’s fire before they jumped, and their eyebrows and eyelashes were singed, but none of them had been burned.

“Crap that was close!” Mark yelled. “How long was that?”

“A third of a minute.” Talia told him shakily. “Our remaining power won’t last long at that rate, and he’ll likely just get quicker. I have the power stored in my items, I’ll use that for the Shields.”

“Start including some references in Xervia and The Nine Valleys in the ones you’re giving Holanam.” Mark instructed. “If his luck says we run for shelter, that’s what we’ll do.”

“I don’t know if my luck is still reliable.” Holanam told him as he shook from the tension of the unexpected attack. “I’m almost out of power too, and without magic, I’m no luckier than any other.”

Talia opened a flap in her armor at her hip and withdrew a simple white stone ring and a teardrop-shaped diamond on a slim gold chain. “Wear these.” she instructed as she cast a mild Tranquility on the shivering elf.

“Wow! These things have a lot of power!” Holanam marveled. “A lot more than I’ve ever had access to before! A lot more!”

“You’re glow is far brighter than it was when we started, and larger in area as well.” Mark nodded.

“Here, ten new Translocation references, each pre-cast and ready to go.” Talia said as she psionicly passed them over, and he triggered one immediately. She passed him another reference, and he jumped them again sixteen seconds later, then fourteen seconds after that.

Soon they were Translocating about every three seconds.

“Do we run for home?!!” Talia asked, her face tight as she held her fear at bay by sheer will.

They Translocated before he could answer.

“His luck hasn’t brought us there yet, even with all the power he’s using!” Mark said as he drew GrimFang.

Holanam jumped them again.

“This is leading to something, it has to be!” Mark continued excitedly, speaking through the jumps now. “Let it run till he takes us home or we only have enough power for one last jump, whichever comes first!”

Holanam moved them at shorter and shorter intervals, sweat beading on his brow. Every second. Then every two-thirds. Then every half-second, the world streaming by in blinks of light and dark. All four including Ria pooled their mental resources in a deep Link to maintain the pace.

Then Holanam faltered, unable to choose the next reference quickly enough, and the enemy was upon them. Zarkog’s head seemed as huge as a castle as he blasted them with his fire from only twenty feet away.

The world suddenly stopped, and went absolutely silent. There was Zarkog, frozen in time, his jet of fire covering half the distance between them. All around them a late-evening sky was full of Sylvan and dragons, still at least half a billion of them in all, every one frozen in position and posture.

And hovering six feet from them was a being like none of them had ever seen before. It was roughly a triangle with curved edges. Its form was a foot and a half long and ten inches wide, with a surface like burgundy velvet on its top side, white velvet on the bottom. It was generally flat, being about an inch thick in the center, and paper thin at the edges. The closest of the three sides was shorter than the other two, and just above the middle of that edge were three small round eyes, each a different color, themselves arranged in a triangle and spaced less than an inch apart. The foremost eye was blue, the right-rear one green, and the left-rear one red. They blinked often and with independent timing in a disconcerting manner. The skin around them formed circular eyelids and the opening between them remained circular as they irised open and closed. Just below the front edge of the creature under the eyes was a two-inch wide horizontal slit that might have been a mouth. The creature’s edges rippled gently as it regarded them.

They simply stared back, flabbergasted by the entire situation. Even Ria manifested to see it, and was struck speechless.

Then its psionic touch was gently in their minds for an instant, and a moment later, it communicated. “Will you be my friend?” it asked in some strange variant of a Speaking, the words barely discernible in the alien feel of the creature’s mind.

“We will, if you will be our friend as well.” Mark immediately replied.

“I will.” the being stated with a particularly energetic wiggle, it’s intent more clear than it’s words. “I will hide you from those, if you would want me to do that.” it continued as it pointed at Zarkog with a momentarily folded front-right corner. “To my people, I am God of Hiding. I have competence with that skill.”

“We’d greatly appreciate that right now.” Mark smiled as he sheathed his sword. “Though not as much as I’d welcome a chance to speak with you at length.”

“And you can have that too.” the strange being stated.

Suddenly they were elsewhere, without any magic having been cast as far as Mark and Talia could tell. Their surroundings were dark at first, and when Talia cast a gradually brightening Light, they were soon seen to be huge and strange.

They merely looked about for a moment, and as Talia’s light reached sufficient luminosity to reveal the full extent of the colossal room about them, it was seen to be constructed of blue stone. They then realized it was a nine-sided amphitheater, built on a scale that would dwarf the biggest giant, with an open and flat bottom, a nine-sided domed roof above, and a nine-sided stage raised twenty feet above the floor in the center. It looked to be as big as Zarkog’s hall beneath the steel dome in Serminak. Their Levitations were still active, and they floated a foot above the center of the stage.

“This is the safest place on your world.” the strange being told them. “Your foes cannot detect you here.”

“I’ve seen a painting of this!” Holanam excitedly revealed as he turned to look all about. “This is in Kraka, the abandoned city of the dragons! This was the chamber where The Ninety-Nine used to meet to decide questions of government, before their population dispersed!”

“And no doubt built to insure the privacy of the deliberations that were held here.” Talia nodded as she inspected the immense room. “I’m not surprised that our pursuers can’t find us here. If they’re even moving yet.”
“They are, for I released time when we came here.” their benefactor stated.

“Thanks.” Mark grinned as he ceased his inspection of their surroundings and regarded the alien god. “I assume that it’s your people who inhabit the sixteen spheres that are approaching our world?”

“That is true. You can refer to me by my standing and my marking. I am First Burgundy.

“My people struggled to control our world, and did, and after a time we learned to stop fighting ourselves, and then we had peace and happiness. Then came those you call the demons. We fought, and we lost. A tiny few of us hid, deep beneath the water and stone of our world. We waited a long time. When we were sure the demons had taken all they could find and left, still we hid, for most would not leave their new homes and lives, all hidden deep in our world. And we were afraid. Ages later one of us emerged onto the surface, and found that nothing lived there, nothing at all. The demons had consumed all life they could find, and left long before. We knew that if we rebuilt our society, the demons would return when time had passed, and they would kill us again. Maybe more time passed, maybe less, but they would come. So we made ready for many generations, and then we set out into the void to hunt them.

“Long and long and long we have hunted them. Some worlds we have saved, more or less, from the demons. Others, we could not save, and all life died there. Each time we meet the demons, many of my people die. Sometimes we kill all the demons we find. Sometimes, some flee. And sometimes we flee, when they are too many, or too strong. After we fight the demons, time must pass, and we heal and breed, and then we are many again, and then we can hunt them again.

“We saw those demons who are coming here. We saw them eat the life of a world that had little, only simple things with no perception, but great potential was lost there. We saw they would come here, and we hurried to come here first.

“You are many. You are strong. With you, we can kill these demons. The demons do not know my people come here, for I hide my people from demon-sight. Maybe not so many of my people die this time. Maybe you will help us then. Maybe we will find the demon home-world, and we kill them all. Maybe some time, we kill all the demons everywhere. Then my people rest. Then we have peace and happiness again.

“Your people should not kill your people. Your gods should not let your people kill your people, but your gods are stupid. We should all fight demons. Even gods, demons can eat.”

“I agree.” Mark stated emphatically. “I cannot commit my people, I don’t have that authority, but I think that the leaders of The Just Alliance will agree with me. If you will help protect my world from the demons, we can fight them all together, and we’ll try to make sure that none of our people die. Then we’ll help you fight the demons on other worlds. We will help find their home-world, and together, we will kill them all. We know as well as you that if even one breeding pair of demons survives, they may eventually return to ravage our world. They are a blight that must be eliminated wherever it appears.”

“We agree, but you must show you are not like demons. We saw the energy your people spent in recent time, spent killing and hunting your people. We are still far away in the void, but we saw the energy, for it was great, so I came to see what happened. Your people must stop killing your people, or my people will not talk to you. We will fight the demons without talking to you, and then we will leave, win or lose. And if your people ever go to another world to kill, we will hunt you.”