16. Fencing I #2
Orla cried out for us to stop, but she sounded tinny as my ears rang with a strange numbness. Ciarán was back in my head, but his words were garbled and far away.
I ripped Orla’s broken goggles from my face in time to see Iseult charging again. I deflected her attack with a flash of blue fire that fizzled into sparks.
Iseult’s face was obscured by her visor, but her aggression was clear. This was more than a test to see if I could conjure up a half-decent weapon. This was about her and the resentment she still held for me and whatever role she still blamed me for in Galahad’s death.
She knew I couldn’t make anything other than a flail. She just wanted an excuse to fight me.
A third and fourth flail blocked Iseult’s next attack and put her on the defense for a split second as she was forced to transform her sword into a shield.
“Your eyes—” Ciarán hissed in my head.
“I can handle it!” I snapped back.
“Your retinas can’t!”
Anger flared and triggered muscle memory that wasn’t mine.
Heat spread behind my eyes, the same way it had when I’d woken up in Ciarán’s body in his memories the night before. A blue hue overtook the canyon, and for the first time in our fight, Iseult recoiled.
It had taken me a long time to get used to looking at Ciarán’s eyes, with his glowing orange irises and black sclera. They still made me uneasy sometimes. I wondered what I must look like to Iseult now, with those some black sclera.
“She made eye guards!” Orla called out. “That counts, right?”
“Not a weapon!” Iseult grunted as she whipped another sword out of the air. I dodged again, but the tip of the blade came dangerously close to my face.
“She’s trying to kill you, Blue,” Ciarán warned. “She knows you can’t do what she wants. Give up. We’ll find a different Lyrian.”
“No.”
“This is a waste of time and Skal. If you don’t forfeit, I’ll force you both to stop.”
“I’ve got it handled.”
“You don’t.”
For whatever it was worth, I was at least getting better with a flail than I had been when I’d first wielded one at the beginning of summer. It was still far from an useful weapon, however, even if I could effectively bat away most of Iseult’s attacks.
She preferred her long sword, but it was easy to knock it off balance, and I’d drank enough Skal to make plenty more flails.
And maybe one of these times, it would work, and instead of a flail, I’d deflect her attack with a sword of my own. I would burn through as many flails as I needed to save Gams.
“It’s okay that you can’t do this,” Ciarán said. “Please—”
“Maybe if you shut up for three seconds, I could figure it out!”
“If she hurts you—”
“Worry about yourself, Grimguard.”
“My job is to worry about you.”
“Then take a break!”
Sweat stung the cuts Orla’s goggles had gouged into my cheeks, and Iseult remained impossible to read under her visor as she swung over and over.
Her blade nicked my arm, and I gasped at the electric pain that cut my skin. She pivoted, and her leg of Skal crashed into my side.
Something cracked, and pain blossomed through my ribs. Whatever healing I’d managed to help along the last several days had been undone, leaving me staggering and wheezing for air.
“That’s enough!” Ciarán commanded from the steps of the keep, and fury rose in my stomach and throat. “Iseult, she can’t—”
I whirled, pulling another flail into existence and throwing it at Ciarán before I knew I was doing it. Skal crackled as the weapon zipped through the air and embedded itself in the stone next to Ciarán’s head.
Except it wasn’t a flail that stuck out from the stone, but the long handle of a blue, sparking javelin.
Ciarán’s black and orange eyes widened as he stared back at me with his mouth agape.
A pregnant silence fell over us, and the snapping of the sparks that wafted off my weapon was the only sound in the canyon until Orla spoke.
“That’s not a flail.”
Metal clinked against metal as Iseult pulled her helmet off. Cheeks flushed and forehead slick with sweat, she regarded me with a curled lip and flared nostrils.
“You promised.” I pointed at the javelin sticking out of the wall.
“You nearly killed your own Grimguard,” Iseult sneered. “I’m not sure that makes you an ideal ally to join, but a promise is a promise, and Orla’s right. That is not a flail.”
She deflated as she looked over the others, taking in Tiernan’s injuries, Fana’s wide eyes, Orla’s fidgeting hands, and the javelin sparking inches from Ciarán’s head.
Then Iseult straightened up, shaking her silver hair over her shoulder.
“Lyria, Our Lady who founded Tulyr, had four daughters. Two of them were not Magicians, but only Magicians could come to Skalterra.” Iseult pointed up at the sliver of sky visible through the canyon’s peaks.
Silver moonlight lit the lips of the cliff edges, dyed by the unseen moons.
“Of the four Magicians who created Skalterra, she was the only one with family left on the other side. She created and named our moons, one for each daughter left in Keldori. Sometimes, Lady Lyria would disappear for weeks at a time. It’s rumored she spent those weeks in Keldori, with her daughters, using a secret door between worlds that only she knew about. ”
“Okay.” My heart pounded. There was a way home without the Rift, and Iseult knew about it. “Where’s the door?”
Iseult blinked slowly at me. “I don’t know. She refused to say, but she was a historian and allegedly kept a journal. If she recorded a secret door to Keldori, it might be there.”
“Then where’s the journal?” I demanded.
“Gone.” Iseult shrugged. “After the fall of Tulyr fifty years ago, most of the city left, including our historian. Grandfather said she packed all of Lady Lyria’s writings, stole them away in the middle of the night, and we never saw her again.”
The canyon reeled, and I fought back my rising disappointment.
“What are you saying?” I needed her to say it plainly if she wanted me to believe her.
“I’m saying what you’re looking for might exist, but you’ll never find it in time. Your grandma was wrong. I can’t help you. No Lyrian can. You have no back way into Keldori.”