Siege at Howling Rock
Part Six
Vaya felt the moment the corruption loosened its hold on her. She crawled through the dirt, trying to coax a little more strength from her drained muscles. Rayek had fallen to exahustion somewhere behind her, but Vaya pushed on, dragging herself ever closer to the purple glow just out of reach. Overheard the sky began to turn from black to dark blue.
And then there was a great flash of light in the east, and it felt as though the thousand threads holding her down snapped at once. Vaya lunged to her feet with a renewed surge of strength. Adrenaline and inertia carried her forward. The great flash had left her with spots in her eyes, but as her vision slowly adjusted to the pre-dawn light, she could make out a pair of figures crouching against the eastern sky, locked in an embrace.
She scrambled over the broken ground, all sense of balance lost. She fell to her knees and struggled back onto her feet. She saw the two figures slowly draw apart, one supporting the other. Beast cradled Kahvi in his arms. Little crackles of purple light still danced about them, like the sparks of a dying fire. But Kahvi had gone dark and still.
Again Vaya’s legs gave out and she crawled the last few yards. Beast slowly lay Kahvi down on the ground and stepped back. He barely seemed to notice Vaya’s approach. She barely noticed his retreat. All her attention was focused on her mother.
Vaya pulled herself up alongside the fallen elf. Kahvi lay on her back, limbs all akimbo. Where once the Palacestone had glowed at her breast, now there was only a gaping blackness. Dust covered most of her exposed flesh, but her face was a pale mask streaked with kohl. The purple tear-marks had turned black.
Kahvi blinked once. Her eyes struggled to focus. Dark eyes. Vaya could not see their color in the dim light, but somehow she knew they had become green again.
“Mother,” Vaya called weakly, her voice hoarse from the dust.
“Vaya…” Kahvi whispered. “It’s… quiet now.”
Her breath left her in a long hissing sigh.
The black streaks under her eyes began to spread. Skin flaked away into dry ash. A soft crackling sound rose up from her chest, like tinder catching fire. Flesh withered and bones splintered as the last of the magic left the body it had so stubbornly held together. Vaya took Kahvi in her arms and held her close as her broken shell turned to first to charcoal, then to a powder-fine ash.
Vaya wept, but not from grief. She felt a powerful feeling of relief wash over her. And the warmth of a mother’s pride.
* * *
One moment Melati was desperately fighting to retain some vestige of consciousness, the next she felt perfectly well and alert. The oppressive feeling of nausea evaporated. The ringing in her ears stopped, and the starstone pendant fell still against her collarbone. She had awoken from a nightmare.
“It’s over,” she breathed, as she slowly righted herself in Aurek’s arms.
“We cannot be certain–” Aurek began.
But Melati was certain. The pall that had hung over Howling Rock had lifted. Her every magical sense told her so. As did the memories of the messenger sphere, still hovering just within reach of her consciousness.
When the corrupted starstone is drained, its influence on the surroundings collapses. A slow extinguishing results in a gradual release, but violent destruction results in equally violent liberation.
“I will send to the Palace for confirmation–” Aurek went on. Melati broke free of his grasp and floated up the tunnel as fast as her magic would carry her. Her hands brushed the rock steps as she flew up towards the fresh air. She could sense no evidence of corruption – not in the rock, not in the topsoil.
She surfaced in the cave. Rather than looking for the exit, she simply shaped a hole through the Rock’s underbelly. She burst out into the early morning air. The smell of death lingered on the breeze, but it was old death, harmless as fossilized bone. Feeble sending stars touched the edge of her mind. The stricken warriors scattered all around Howling Rock were slowly regaining consciousness.
Souls in need of healing cried out to her. But she ignored them. The only soul she cared about was the one who couldn’t speak to her.
“Beast!” Melati cried out. “Beast, where are you?”
She heard no answer, but instinct urged her eastward. She flew over the desolate ground, following the faint echo of the starstone’s hum. Droplets of Kahvi’s blood had congealed in the dust. Melati followed the trail… and the strange, almost-magical tug to her heart.
This way, this way, this way…
She passed Rayek, slowly rising to his hands and knees. **Beast, where is he?** she demanded.
“Is it over…?” Rayek rasped.
“Beast! Where is my lifemate? You said you would keep him with you!”
Rayek shook his head and made a vague gesture ahead.
“Beast!” Melati hollered. She pushed her floating magic to its limit in search of a little more speed.
Evidence strongly points to a rift event, the Timmain-within cautioned. Survival within the affected area unlikely.
Shut up, shut up.
The proper course now is to mentally prepare oneself.
But there was no way she could imagine a life without Beast.
Your potential for growth is hindered by a lack of imagination. You would do well to learn the lessons of your pain.
Shut up! Melati shrieked inwardly. The wind in her eyes blurred her vision. She thought she could see something ahead. A minor fleshshaping altered her eyes for night-vision. The last traces of color faded from the world as shapes came into sharper focus. There was a figure standing up ahead… tall, distinctive, one arm slightly longer than the other, a long tail twitching irritably.
“Beast!” she cried, overcome with relief.
The land was blasted clean of dust and debris to a radius of ten paces around Beast. With her night-vision, Melati could see where the eruption of magic had carved shockwave lines into the exposed bedrock. Something moved in the very center of the crater – Vaya, holding an armful of ash, and a shard of brightmetal. But Melati promptly ignored her as she had the others. Beast was all that mattered.
Melati set down on the edge of the circle. The light breeze shifted, and she was struck with the scent of blood: Beast’s and someone’s else.
He stood swaying slightly on his lizard-feet, examining his hands. Something had torn at his left temple, and dark blood glistened at his cheek, his nose and lips, his ears. A shimmering light drew Melati’s gaze to Beast’s fleshshaped arm. The skin was burned from his knuckles to his forearm, and little specks of light still clung to his fingertips. He shook them off with a pensive expression.
“Beast!” Melati called again, desperation creeping into her voice now.
This time he heard her. He turned and lifted his head. His eyes met hers, and a broad grin lit up his battered face.
Mel!
His voice: rich and smooth as silk-fur… yet somehow different… even richer still, with notes she had never quite managed to hear before…
His eyes: aglow with triumph. Even at her distance, Mel could see every variation of liquid silver, and the minute flecks of blue radiating out from his pupils…
He was awash in color, despite her night-vision: the soft bronze of his elf-skin, the carmine of his scales, the butter yellow of his leather kilt, the purple glow that surrounded him…
Mel…
Again he spoke her name, voice overflowing with love. But his lips didn’t move.
She blinked repeatedly, trying to clear her vision. For a moment, she thought she saw a different face flicker overtop of Beast’s… younger, unscarred, crowned with a full hair of tousled silver hair.
“Beast?” she asked, her voice a mere whisper. She barely heard it over the beating of her heart.
**Mel? Can you hear me?**
The voice echoing in her head was Beast’s, but it was more than Beast. Long-buried visions flashed before her mind’s eye. Again the youth’s face flashed over Beast’s, the face of the soulbrother she had been forced to give up so many years ago.
No… it’s not possible.
**Mel?** His smile faltered. **Can you hear? Please answer me…**
**Beast? Is it you?** Had she found her soulbrother only to lose her lifemate? Had the rift event wiped his mind back to the night Yosha died? If so, then Beast was lost forever.
But his grin returned, brighter than ever. **It’s me. All of me.**
But who?
**Beast?**
**And Yosha! I remember now! I remember everything!**
Fascinating, the Timmain-within remarked. An infusion of the hybrid starstone directly into the bloodstream: it has triggered a full regeneration from the base matrix.
She started to shake her head. It wasn’t possible. She had let Yosha go. She had made her choice; she had come to accept that she could not have them both.
He sensed her terror. He sent her comforting waves of tranquility.
He sent!
**I’m here, Mel. I’m here with you.**
He was. He was inside her very soul.
Beast… and Yosha! They were one and the same. They always had been.
His laughter echoed inside her head. **I know! All this time I was so afraid he’d come back… but he was here all along. He was me all along!**
All the years they’d shared seemed to compress to a mere instant. In her mind’s eye she was back on the cliff face, at the moment they had locked minds. She was seized by the memory: the fear, the terrible rejection, the slow slide into thin air...
But this time she did not resist. This time she cast away the last shreds of doubts and embraced his soul utterly.
Beast – Yosha – her Recognized – held out his clawed hand.
For a moment longer, Melati stayed rooted to the ground. Then, with a loud sob, she she ran to him.
She tackled him, and he staggered, his claws digging into the ground for purchase. She wound her arms about his shoulders and locked her legs about his knees. She buried her face in the crook of his neck and howled and wept like an infant. Beast struggled to hold his balance as her sobs racked them both.
“You’re crying–“
**Beyond joy!** She pressed frantic kisses to his throat, his jaw, his bloodstained lips. She drank in the warmth of his love, flowing from his soul into hers. ** Beast – Yosha – I don’t deserve this much happiness!**
He gently set her down, held her still. He cupped her jaw with his scaled hand, and she felt the rush of magic from the starstone dust as it passed from his skin to hers. She stared into his bright eyes, and the depths she saw made her suddenly timid. But he tutted gently when she tried to avert her gaze, and the softest pressure from his claws made her look at him again.
“Of course you do,” he beamed at her. “You deserve everything.”
She opened her mouth to protest, feeling the deep-seated shame stirring inside her. Beast silenced her with a wordless sending of comfort and a brushed of his clawed thumb over her lips.
“I can see you now,” he said, forestalling any argument. “All of you.” His expression turned awestruck. “And I thought you were beautiful before! Now… oh Mel, there are no words for this!”
**We don’t need words anymore,** she reminded him, her sending giddy.
Her starstone pendant pulsed with sudden warmth. Beast glanced down at it and smiled.
“I can hear them.”
“Who–” Mel began to ask. But she had her answer as a sudden light blazed over Beast’s shoulder.
The Palace set down just beyond the human ruins, the doors opening before it had properly settled. Aurek’s sending must have reached them. Or else they had sensed the end of the corruption themselves.
Melati didn’t care either way.
She slid her arms around Beast’s shoulders once more, caressing the bony pauldron she’d given him, probing lightly with her healer’s senses. When she reached up to banish the gash at his temple, he stayed her hand.
He smiled wordlessly, and she understood. A delicate brush of magic sealed the wound, but left a livid red seam: another memorial in scar tissue, but this one of life, not death.
She kissed him fiercely. She tasted the blood on his lips, the traces of starstone dust. She felt the magic sinking deep into her bones, into her very cells, binding them together on a level even beyond Recognition.
He kissed her as if he meant to consume her, and she drank it in as if she meant to drown herself. When they parted, breathless and lightheaded, Beast caught her up in his arms and carried her towards the open doors of the Palace.
* * *
The sky slowly began to lighten over Howling Rock. The wounded and the stricken struggled to their feet. Swift ordered search parties out from the Palace to help them to safety. No one lingered at the entry to question the bizarre sight of Beast carrying Melati off to their private rooms.
Skywise and Quicksilver found Savin and Ryx staggering down from the shoulder of the Rock. Ember braved the horror of the scenery to track down her children and granddaughter. Teir sensed Vaya’s sending star and followed it all the way to the crater.
She sat on the ground, covered in fine ash, holding a broken spearpoint. When she looked up at her brother, he could see the tears had left tracks in her mask of black ash. Her face seemed some frightening inverse of Kahvi’s. He struggled to hide his instinctive disgust.
“It’s over,” Vaya breathed. “She’s free.”
“Then we’re safe now?”
“She’s safe now,” Vaya nodded. “She’s Mother again. She’s free.”
With no diplomatic reply to offer, Teir settled for holding out his hand and helping Vaya to her feet. She swayed, her legs cramping and unable to support her properly. Teir slung her arm over his shoulders and let her lean on him.
Swift met Rayek as he was slowly limping towards the Palace-glow. His clothes were torn and his sword-arm hung slack at his side. When Swift clasped him close in an embrace, he hissed at the pressure to his ribs.
“You’re safe,” she breathed into his matted hair. “I was so worried–”
“I didn’t destroy her,” Rayek whispered miserably. “I barely even wounded her.”
“Hush, I’m sure you fought bravely–”
“I dropped my sword – couldn’t hold it anymore – so tired…”
“You can rest now. It’s over. Skywise confirmed it – the Palacestone is dead.” Swift hugged him again, more gently this time, and after a long moment his arms slowly came up to encircle her as well.
“It’s not over yet,” Rayek said bleakly. “Not for me.”
* * *
Aurek, Timmain and Weatherbird made their way to the surface and reunited with their loved ones in the great atrium of the Palace. The final search teams were returning, with the warriors who had not yet recovered from their battle with the corruption. Last of all to rejoin the group were Cheipar and Skot, gingerly carrying Pike’s prone form between them. Vaya let out a cry of horror as she beheld his gray face.
Slowly they all took stock. Three warriors had broken bones that would need splinting or magic. Dunecat had a headwound that needed immediate tending. Most who’d fought on the surface were still nauseated and dizzy. And Halcyon, Marath and Pike could not be wakened.
“What’s wrong with them?” Ember asked as she knelt by her cold, still daughter. “Are they dying?”
“Why them?” Kirjan protested, so sharply it jarred his broken rib. He coughed violently, bringing up blood. When he caught his breath, he grimaced and wiped his mouth.
“Others were out in that filth longer,” he protested.
“The corruption affects all elves differently,” Timmain pronounced.
“Winnowill – you must heal them!” Ember cried.
“The only healer for this malady is time,” Timmain said. “They had their very souls’ fire smothered by the corruption. A healer’s magic will restore their bodies, but without sufficient strength, their spirits cannot long remain bound to their flesh.”
“We can give them time,” Swift declared. “Petalwing, Waterleaf!”
Waterleaf promptly cocooned Marath, then moved on to Pike. When Petalwing began to spit wrapstuff around Halcyon, Kirjan waved the Preserver aside.
“Kirjan – what?” Ember began. But Kirjan sat down on the crystal floor and gathered Halcyon in his arms.
“She’s never been cocooned before,” he explained to Ember’s stunned expression. “I won’t put her through that alone.” He smiled wanly. “Besides, I could use a rest myself.”
He closed his eyes as Petalwing encircled him and his lifemate. When the Preserver had finished, the vague outlines of the sleeping lifemates could just be made out through the silvery webbing.
* * *
The Plainsrunners laid the pair of cocoons on a fur-covered slab, near the wrapstuffed Navigator’s. “The Palace’s aura will speed their healing,” Timmain said. “When their spirits have refreshed themselves, we can tend to their bodies.”
Haxhi touched Ember’s hand gently. “Will you stay with their cocoons, until they’re ready to lead the Pack again?”
Ember shook her head. “They’ll be safe in the Palace. But I cannot stay inside these walls much longer.”
Haxhi’s eyes lit up. “Then… will you come back to us?”
“You’re more than capable of leading the Pack yourself,” Ember pointed out.
“That’s not what I asked, Grandmother.”
Ember hesitated. She shot a glance at Teir, and he smiled encouragingly, but the little nod left the final decision to her.
“The Wild Hunt will ride alongside the Pack,” Ember said at length. “Until Halcyon and Kirjan are well again. And then… then we’ll see what the future holds.”
* * *
“Are you sure you don’t want to sleep?” Skywise asked Savin anxiously. “Even a few days in wrapstuff would make a difference…”
Savin’s face was still wan and bloodless, but she managed a faint smile. “I can sleep just fine without wrapstuff. What I really need is a stiff belt of rum.”
On the atrium floor, Skot knelt next to Pike’s cocoon, gently smoothing the strands of the outer case of webbing. “Sorry, squirrel-cheeks,” he whispered. “I know I ought to be starry-eyed like my brother and get wrapped up beside you all sweet-like… but you know how much I hate the stuff.”
He fell silent as Cheipar knelt down beside him. They maintained a silent vigil for several long moments, then Cheipar’s hand came down firmly on Skot’s shoulder.
“You’ll stay with us. Both of you.”
“Aww, thanks for the offer, but–”
Cheipar’s fingers tightened on his sire’s shoulder. “Wasn’t asking.”
Skot reached up to cover Cheipar’s hand with his own. “Well, I know better than you cross you, ugly.”
Cheipar raised a wry eyebrow, before muttering under his breath: “Drukkin’ right you do.”
Skot let out a long weary sigh as he slumped against Cheipar. “Thank you, son,” he murmured.
* * *
“Rayek?” Swift slowly approached her lifemate as he stood in the open doorway of the Palace, gazing out at the ruined landscape. The sky had warmed to shades of rose, and the dawning light cast stark shadows over Howling Rock.
“The land is still dead…” he grumbled.
“But now new life can take root.”
“If we were to channel the power of the Palace behind a force of treeshapers… we could bring this landscape to life by midday.”
Swift shook her head. “I think this land has had enough magic poured into it. Let it rest. Let it heal in its own time.”
“I thought this night would unfold differently. I thought I would defeat Kahvi and redeem myself in the eyes of the Plainsrunners. I thought my magic would return to me once I had cast off this burden of guilt…”
“And it hasn’t?”
Rayek hung his head. “Vaya and Beast cheated me of my redemption. Now that Kahvi is dead and the corruption has lifted… what more can I do? The land must heal in its own time, you say. But when is my time? Must I wait until the seedlings become trees around Howling Rock?”
Swift had no answer for him. She touched his shoulders lightly, and though he flinched, he did not withdraw. Tentatively, she slid her arms under his, pressing against his back, fitting her body to his.
“I have lost the best part of myself,” he pronounced bleakly.
“Oh, Rayek, your magic is not the best part of you!” she said fiercely. Her arms tightened about him, despite his grunt of discomfort, and she pressed her cheek to his neck. **It wasn’t your magic I fell in love with back in Sorrow’s End: you scarcely had more than you do now. You learned it once before – you can do it again. Don’t you doubt that for one moment!**
**Tam… how can you be so certain?**
**Because you never stop striving to be more than you are. Because you refuse to yield to anything. That’s the best part of you, my mountain lion. And that’s why you’ll triumph, however long it takes. And I’ll be at your side every step of the way.**
* * *
Subdued celebration filled the halls of the Palace. The victory was bittersweet, and the prevailing mood was one of weary relief. Rum and dreamberry wine inspired drowsiness rather than revelry. And while a few elves remarked knowingly upon Beast and Melati’s disappearance, the lack of prolonged gossip suggested they thought it simply a call of the bloodsong.
Timmain knew better. Even from the troll’s tunnel, she had sensed the eruption of magic. A rift event – a thousand times more powerful than the death-light Rayek had unleashed over Howling Rock – absorbed almost entirely into the magic-resistant body of Beast.
His very presence had served as both weapon and shield. Timmain understood. As she searched both her memory and the Scroll of Colors, she could not find a more favorable outcome to the battle. Nearly every other thread of color in the Scroll showed death and destruction, both small-scale and large.
Only Beast could have killed Kahvi. Only Beast could have endured the rift event.
She ought to be jubilant: of all the threads, her children had once again blindly seized the one that would sustain them. Hard-won experience had taught her to remain objective, but the mother in her could not help but rejoice to see her offspring triumph.
But was it a triumph? She knew better than to trust in a single moment. She turned the Scroll, searching for the future paths of the elf called Beast. She found nothing.
Frowning, she searched for his present, for the act she knew was unfolding in the chamber above her. She could sense the gathering energies of a Recognition being fulfilled, a new life taking root.
Yet she could see nothing in the Scroll. Melati, yes. But Beast himself was as cloaked as Kahvi had been.
In growing disquiet, Timmain called up the moment of the rift event. She watched as Beast did battle with what could only be described as an absence. And then Kahvi appeared in the flickering colors, just as the purple light flowed out of her body and into Beast’s.
All the magic of the Palacestone had gone into his blood…
He had inherited Kahvi’s invisibility in the Scroll. What other dangerous gifts had she passed to him? How would his lifemate and her heart-father make use of them? And what manner of child would he beget on Melati?
Could such a child be allowed to live?
There was no time to consult the Scroll. How could she trust the Scroll anymore, when great holes were appearing in her vision of the Multitude? She could only trust her own judgment.
A choice had to be made. The moment of Recognition’s fulfillment was at hand.
“Forgive me, my children…” Timmain whispered, as she let her eyes fall closed.
When two souls meet in Recognition, the spark of a third soul is kindled. Yet it cannot truly awaken until the moment Recognition is fully answered. So it was as the sun rose on Howling Rock. A delicate tremor ran up the walls of the Scroll Chamber, signaling the creation of new life.
Timmain opened her eyes. She had made her choice. She could only hope it was the right one.
Elfquest copyright 2016 Warp Graphics, Inc. Elfquest, its logos, characters, situations, all related indicia, and their distinctive likenesses are trademarks of Warp Graphics, Inc. All rights reserved. Some dialogue taken from Elfquest comics. All such dialogue copyright 2016 Warp Graphics, Inc. All rights reserved. Alternaverse characters and insanity copyright 2016 Jane Senese and Erin Roberts.