The Grey Tower

Ubriel and Peach moved through the next three trollocs like performing a well rehearsed dance. Ubriel lay close on Peach’s neck and Peach charged forward. As she approached the next set of trollocs, Peach reared up and kicked forward knocking one of the shaggy maned creatures in the chest. It lost its feet and fell into one of its fellows. The two of them fell, dropping their weapons and the, now armed, women set upon them. They never stood a chance. Ubriel came as close as she might ever be to feeling sorry for the creatures as they shrieked and flailed and died.

When Peach was again on all four hooves, Ubriel was hurtling forward on her back toward a beast with a muzzle like a wolf on a face beneath human eyes. The thing wore a helm with no face guard but instead a razor sharp blade stood off of the top like a crest. Oddly, the stupid creature was only wearing a tough leather jerkin for armor otherwise. As Peach brought her up close and then veered to the left as she passed the monster, Ubriel swung down with her axe and neatly sliced the muzzle right off of the beast’s face. Near to standing in the stirrups, she indicated that Peach should stop and her friend did, nearly locking her front legs in mid-canter. Giving a little backward flick of her feet in the stirrups as she sat again, Ubriel asked Peach to kick. The powerful kick of her back legs punched the mangled beast in the chest, knocking the air from its lungs and sending it flying backward. Ubriel did not pause to see if it rose from where it fell.

With a deep, throaty, “Hyaaa!” Ubriel and Peach leapt forward and engaged a porcine trolloc with cloven hoof hands. It could not hold a sword or staff but it wore guantlets with whips coming out of the wrist pieces. The tips glistened with sharp metal tacks and the thing grunted like a whole litter of piglets as it swung the long whips. One of the sharp tips slid across Peach’s shoulder and the horse screamed and snorted. Well trained and faithful to the last hair, Peach never broke her stride. She pushed her head in toward the creature and managed, with her teeth, to grab a whip near where it connected to the guantlet on the thing’s left hoof. With a yank of her head, the horse pulled the monster forward, disrupting the creature’s swinging whip. It came down in a shortened arc and caught Ubriel across the stomach. The slash dug in and sliced her just under her lowest rib on the left, leaving a bleeding gash more than four inches long.

Ubriel had a split second thought that if Peach could handle the pain of the slice on her shoulder, then she could handle the one on her stomach, then Ubriel pushed her shield at the whip as it was sliding away. The metal tip caught on the edge of the shield and Ubriel twisted in the saddle to bring the axe down into the porcine neck. It gouged down through the thick shoulder bone and the ribs under it. Exploding her arms up and out wide away from each other as she sat back up straight in the saddle, she lifted her left leg and kicked the creature back. It made a satisfying thud as it landed on the ground.

Zacharyn and Lin set out to kill trollocs. He, being a head and shoulders taller than she, threw fireballs and lightnings at the creatures as they stepped into their paths. She swung her blades at those that came from either side or that somehow managed to run past Zacharyn’s weaves. To Zacharyn, it felt like they traveled miles in this formation, when in truth they only managed to walk about fifteen feet. He felt as if he had thrown hundreds of fireballs. He had actually only thrown three and two lightnings. He was tired and he was beginning to slow. Lin spared a glance at him, a worried look in her eyes. “Brother?”

“I am fine. I will be wearied when this is done but I am fine right now.” Zacharyn took a deep breath and pulled the sheer stubborn Will from his bones to strengthen him.

They went another ten feet and Lin pointed out across the street. She had discovered another myrddraal. Ubriel was facing it and readying for a charge forward on Peach. Zacharyn threw several fireballs and two lightnings came from elsewhere up the street. It must have sensed Zacharyn’s channeling because it turned and moved toward him. Zacharyn thanked all that the Creator had commanded to fall in his favor that the thing was not on a horse. It was difficult enough to deal with the thing as it flowed forward and tried to reach him with its sword. Zacharyn reached for the Source and threw a wall of Air at it. That stopped the thing just long enough.

Zacharyn snatched more flows of Air and wove them around the creature in a braided cord of Power. The thing seemed to be truly surprised at the predicament but Zacharyn could feel it straining against the bonds. It turned its head toward them and smiled a sickening grin. Lin ran in and thrust forward with both of her blades. One slid cleanly between two ribs, puncturing its lung and the other went through its heart. As Lin jumped back and removed her blades, she could see the inky blood spilling out and being pressed to the thing with the flows of Air.

Ubriel and Peach rode in then behind the myrddraal and she swung her axe as she passed using both the weight of the axe and the momentum of the charge to help her more cleanly swipe its head from its shoulders. Seeing the head of the beast roll to the ground, Zacharyn released the flows he was still holding. He left one band of Air tied around the thing’s knees so that when he released it, it began to writhe and fell over in the dirt of the street.

All around them, shrieks and howls from dying trollocs echoed in the night. This one had bonded the horde. There would be none left in a matter of minutes. Ubriel turned Peach and walked toward Zacharyn. He met her half-way and when she moved her foot out of a stirrup on her left side, he grabbed the pommel of her saddle, put his foot in that stirrup and bounced up to stand next to her and share a lingering kiss. Peach might have been annoyed had Ubriel not thought to shift her weight and half stand in the other stirrup. As it was she just snorted at the silly display and waited for them to stop. Only a few moments later, Zacharyn hopped back to the ground and Ubriel tapped Peach’s sides to urge her to walk on so that they could check for any trollocs that might not have been bonded.

Ubriel still felt the thrill of the kiss she had shared with Zacharyn and the tingle of it on her lips. Her whole body tingled and she felt flushed. She turned Peach and rode back toward the stables. She found Rory on his knees next to the small trolloc that she had given into his custody earlier. “What happened?” She stopped Peach next to the old man.

“It must have been bonded to a myrddraal that was killed out there. Poor Kenni and all the others with him. One minute he was putting up a spirited protest to being studied and the next, he was lying here, breathing labored and then…” Rory’s moaning sobs cut off his speech. “You killed Kenni!” Ubriel wasn’t sure he should be bemoaning the loss of a trolloc in the middle of a Kandori street but he was Rory, and Rory would do as he pleased. She turned Peach to continue on to the stable and heard him behind her shuffle to his feet. She turned to look and saw him kick “Poor Kenni...” in the leg and heard him say, “Will I never get to have a subject to study?!”

Ubriel tittered and slumped in the saddle feeling the exertion and the weariness that suffused her bones. She thought she was leaning forward on the pommel of the saddle but when she tried to speak to Peach, she discovered that she was slumped entirely over the horse’s neck. She tried to lift her head and herself and the world seemed to tilt a bit and then slide off to the left. Or maybe it had been her sliding to the right as all of a sudden she felt the ground slam into her side. She realized her eyes were closed again when she tried to look and couldn’t. She only thought to begin to panic when she couldn’t open her eyes nor utter a cry for help.

She felt Peach nuzzle her and then that hairy lummox pulled half her hair out of her scalp!
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Peach had seen many things from her girl over the years but she was fairly certain that falling limply to the ground and lying with her face in the dirt was not an intentional act. When she pushed her face to her girl’s head and nuzzled her and got no response, she was completely certain. grabbing as much of her hair and shirt collar as she could in her mouth, she pulled hard and hauled Ubriel back toward where the other people were. Peach was not feeling well. She thought those oats at dinner were suspect. Maybe she had just run too hard and stopped too suddenly during the battle. Perhaps she had kicked too hard. Whatever the cause, her knees were weak and her girl was heavy. She never noticed on her back but in her teeth Ubriel was enormous and heavy.

She reached the yard in front of the Mael’din house where Zacharyn and his family were gathering. She dropped Ubriel there. She looked up. Zacharyn recognized them and took a few steps forward. Then his sister toppled over backward off of the steps, landing against his side. Well Ubriel needed him more and Peach raised her head to whinny at him. A strange honking sound came out instead and Peach started to look around to find the goose only, her head did not turn as it should and she discovered that the ground was very kindly catching her. As her eyes closed, she saw Zacharyn try to take another step in her direction while still holding up his sister. Then everything went black.

They’re dropping like flies! Zacharyn thought anxiously supporting his limp sister on one side and looking out at the still and fallen forms of Ubriel and Peach both lying in the street. He saw Kaci just then and shoved Lin’s limp form at her, trying not to be too rough about it. He launched himself from the steps simultaneously calling out for Rory. Blast that old codger…

Zacharyn had taken only a few steps out toward Ubriel when the man he had seen throwing lightning earlier stepped into the light from the open door and knelt next to Ubriel’s form. He could not see precisely what he had done but he knew as he saw Ubriel convulse and heard her gasp, he had Healed her. As Ubriel was struggling to sit up and gain a sense of what had happened, the man stood and strode past Zacharyn toward Lin.

This time he saw precisely what the man did. A web of Spirit he laid across the girl’s head and then laced it with a thread of each of the other elements. Precise and delicate but all enmeshed. He drew it down across the girl’s body and Zacharyn could see the weaves working, drawing out poisons and knitting the flesh together. By the time the man released his weaves and moved on, Ubriel was kneeling next to Peach and keening. “Peach! No!” She lept to her feet and nearly onto the man in a single movement, “You must Heal my horse!” At first she said it as if he must have obviously simply made an oversight. But as he kept walking, not even acknowledging her, she ran around to plant herself in front of him. “Stop! You don’t understand. I need my horse to be Healed!”

The man stopped then but only to look daggers at the demanding little girl in front of him. He was a large man. An imposing man. He held up his right hand and suddenly held a sparking ball of lightning. Just then Zacharyn decided it was time to come to the rescue. “Ubriel! Let him go now.” And to the man he said, “What she meant to say was, thank you and Light be with you.” He wove a gag of Air and stuffed it into her mouth and then threw her over his shoulder. Completely ignoring the pummeling of her tiny and ineffectual fists against his back and the slightly more annoying waving of her feet in the air in front of him, he walked her back to Peach.

Depositing the love of his life in a heap on the ground next to her horse, the proximity to her friend in need drained the fight from her and he watched the compassion in her pour out to the horse. Peach’s labored breathing was audible from where he stood and he almost couldn’t take the agony of hearing Ubriel start to weep. “I think I can do what he did.” Zacharyn knelt next to Ubriel and wrapped his arms around her, pulling her slightly back and away from the horse. He wasn’t sure of what the effect would be on her if she were touching Peach and he messed up the weaves.

He was barely aware as Rory arrived there next to him and he wove the net of Spirit. Ubriel couldn’t see what it was that Zacharyn did but she knew that the horse was thrashing and Rory was hmm’ing and nodding. Finally it stopped and Zacharyn let Ubriel go. He watched her scramble over to the horse still lying on her side on the ground. She spoke to her horse and then, oddly, Peach grew to an enormous height. He only had a moment to consider and decide that, no, she had only stood up. It was he that had fallen over now and the greying of his vision was because he was passing out. The last thing he heard was Rory saying, “I wondered when that was going to happen to the boy.”

Ubriel stayed late with Peach making sure she was truly okay. When Zacharyn finally came to retrieve her from the stable, he found her sleeping in a pile of hay just outside the stall where Peach was snoring lightly herself. Shooing her back into the house, he steered her into a chair next to Lin and made sure they both had a huge serving of the early morning breakfast that his mother and other sister were cooking.

A hot mug of lemon tea and a tall biscuit covered in stewed berries and a couple of links of sausage were set before them each. After plowing through the food in an almost mechanical way, noting the good tastes and comforting feeling as the foods settled into her cavernously empty stomach, Ubriel looked up at Kaci. Meeting the other woman’s eyes, she asked, “Are you going to talk to your brother?”

Kaci grimaced and said, “I do not need to talk to anyone. Not yet. I have my children and my husband and I have no interest in leaving them in order to go chasing adventures in the One Power.” Her husband came up beside her then and kissed her lightly. He obviously knew about his wife’s secret and had chosen to keep it with her. Ubriel looked at their family and then over at Rory, snoozing in a chair at one end of the table. The old man was slumped back with his arms splayed to either side and his head tilted back and his mouth open, rough snores escaping him here and there.

She knew enough of his story to know that he had lived a full life before learning to channel. He had married and had children and then pursued the One Power. But he had not had the spark. He would never have touched the Source without training. Kaci was like Zacharyn, spark in-born. She had obviously had the talent quickened and survived. Would she be able to wait safely? Zacharyn shared a look with her and then shrugged saying, “If you ever become a danger to yourself or others, you need to go see the mason and ask him to shield you and get you to the Tower. He will understand it. But until then, I don’t see any reason to steal their mother from my niece and nephew.”

Ubriel nodded. That settled, food eaten, wounds Healed; Ubriel was ready to sleep before heading back to begin her wedding preparations. Apparently Zacharyn was too. He excused them from the company of the rest of the family, scooped up his niece and nephew and beckoned to Ubriel. With the two tiny tots to chaperone them, no one objected when they all piled into one large bed and went straight to sleep.