A Time for Sacrifice
T he watchfire not only kept Estral warm, but prevented her ink from freezing as she wrote in her book, or what she one day hoped to be a book on the history of the Green Riders.
Currently she was jotting down notes on passages she would expand on later.
Her mind was too muddled by worry, and a lack of good sleep, to draft well-formed sentences.
After they’d arrived at the Tower of the Earth encampment, she had attempted to rest in the tent they provided her, but she could only doze fitfully.
Eventually she gave up and moved to the watchfire where she could have a full view of the wall where Alton had disappeared, and of the tower.
Word had been sent back to the breach encampment to update Captain Rennard and Dale, as well as to Tower of the Trees where Garth was stationed to see if there was anything Mad Leaf could find out from the guardians.
Duncan paced in front of the wall, muttering to himself, and kicked it from time to time with outbursts of ancient profanities.
Rider Copperhaven remained unconscious and therefore unable to redeposit his pouch into the tower, and Estral and Marc were forbidden to go anywhere near it.
As for Marc, the soldiers were good about giving him little jobs to do to keep him occupied. Otherwise, he ran about with excess energy and threw rocks at the wall.
“That is not going to help your brother,” Duncan chastised.
“Neither is kicking the wall,” Marc shot back, but he relented and threw rocks into the forest instead. He might not, at his age, admit to loving his brother, but his agitation showed otherwise.
Estral couldn’t blame him. She felt helpless and enraged at not being able to do anything. Even if she did touch the wall, she knew she would not be able to engage the guardians, and if she entered the tower, Haurris’ old spells would kill her.
I am the worst Golden Guardian ever, she thought.
She’d no voice with which to sing or tell tales.
Her understanding of music had been stolen along with her voice.
She’d played a lute since she was a small child and had been considered excellent at it, but now she could not conceptualize how to make chords even when shown.
She looked down at her book. She was adding notes to the section on the torture of Karigan at the hands of Second Empire in the north, which she had been forced to witness.
It was, she supposed, an act of self-flagellation to work on this part with all the nightmarish details it brought back to the front of her mind.
She would live with the guilt to the end of her days for having gotten Karigan in that situation, no matter Karigan’s forgiveness.
Putting the story down on paper to reveal to all who read it was a continuation of her penance.
But maybe it was too soon to revisit that trauma.
The words blurred before her eyes and she hastily rubbed tears away.
She flipped the page and found the part of the story when the gryphons, Mister Whiskers and Midnight, had come to them to comfort the wounded Karigan who suffered from shock and fever, and to help them escape when Enver arrived to rescue them.
This was easier to bear. She dipped her pen into her inkpot and got caught up in correcting grammatical errors and rephrasing sentences for clarity and impact.
She might not be able to sing anymore, but she still had a voice. It was just expressed with pen and paper.
When she was pleased by her description of sleek Midnight flying overhead against the stars while she and Karigan escaped on Enver’s horse, she set her pen aside and reached for her cup of tea.
It was cold, and she blinked in surprise.
The sun had shifted westward and the watch was changing.
So deeply pulled into her writing had she been that she had not been aware of the passage of time.
It was quiet. Marc wasn’t tearing around or throwing rocks or banging on things anymore. She spied him near the wall staring at it. He stood beside the guard, so she need not—
When a guard arrived to relieve the one who had been on duty, Marc sprinted for the wall.
Estral shot to her feet dropping her mug and book. Her ink pot fell to its side and poured onto the ground in a black puddle. She opened her mouth to shout, but nothing came out. The guards were too slow to react.
When Marc reached the wall, he pressed his hands against its granite facade and was absorbed into it.
“No,” Estral whispered. “No...”
She had failed to keep watch over him and once more she was helpless to act.
“Y ou idiot!” Alton’s mental voice vibrated on crystals even as the guardians rejoiced. He was feeling the strain of holding his shield in place for so long though the hammering had slowed. Perhaps the servants of Mornhavon wondered why they failed to make progress.
The spirit projection of Marc—Alton did not know what else to call it—peered over the edge into the canyon. “You came in first,” he retorted.
“Not by choice.” At least, Alton thought, his brother wasn’t panicking.
“Welcome, young Deyer,” said the Voice of Voices.
“This guardian is Rider Leed,” Alton said.
“Rider Leed is no more,” the Voice told Marc. “I am the voice of the guardians.”
“You all called to me,” Marc said. “I got sick of it, and no one was doing anything to help Alton.”
“Nothing they can do,” Alton said, “and the guardians want to sacrifice us.”
“Oh.” Marc’s voice was small. “Like cousin Pendric.”
“Yes, like cousin Pendric.”
“A sacrifice to help keep the wall intact,” the Voice said, “and to sing with us.”
Marc’s silence said it all.
The hammering against the wall resumed and Alton’s shield faltered.
“A little help from you guardians?” he asked.
To his relief, they lightened his load by focusing their song on the affected area.
“Even if you sacrifice us,” Alton said, “it will not heal this damage or the breach.”
The Voice did not respond.
Marc, meanwhile, who had the attention span of a gnat, knocked on a tall crystal shaft. The resulting disharmonious vibration threw off the song of the guardians.
“Don’t touch anything,” Alton snapped.
Marc pouted. “Hard not to when it surrounds your body.”
“Well, don’t touch it with your mind.”
“How am I supposed to help, then?”
“You would have helped if you stayed away from the wall,” Alton replied. This was ridiculous, arguing with his little brother while trapped in the wall.
Alton’s shield waned further under the assault of Mornhavon’s servants, and crystals swayed and shattered.
The canyon widened with a deafening crack, and the song of the guardians veered out of tune and off rhythm.
To Alton, each blow was like being inside a bell while the hammer rang out the hour. His teeth vibrated.
“To me!” Alton cried to the guardians. “I can’t hold the shield.”
The chaos disunited the guardians and few heeded his call. One who did was the Voice, and she, with some others, tried to restore harmony. It helped very little.
Marc hopped out of the way of a falling column of hornblende.
“It’s not enough,” Alton said through gritted teeth.
“Maybe I can help.”
“Can you sing?” Alton demanded.
“No,” Marc replied.
“Do you have a magic ability I’m unaware of?”
“Got me.”
Alton swore. If he could not halt the damage wrought by Mornhavon’s servants, the guardians would definitely sacrifice him and Marc.
“We’re gonna die, aren’t we,” Marc said.
“If they don’t let us go,” Alton replied, “yeah.”
“I don’t want to die.”
“Me either, but I can’t hold on much longer.”
Marc seemed to turn the situation over in his mind. “We can’t let Blackveil break our wall. It would look bad for the clan.”
Alton snorted. The clan’s reputation was the first thing he thought of?
Tentatively, Marc touched Alton’s head, or at least that was how the illusory images of them appeared, but what Marc actually did was touch Alton’s mind with his own.
“Don’t go too deep,” Alton said.
“And see your memories of kissing girls? Yuck.”
Somehow, Marc knew how to flow his energy into Alton, allowing Alton to strengthen his shield.
“How?” Alton asked.
“No idea. I just thought it.”
The reinforced shield muffled the pounding and the wall stabilized. It gave the guardians a chance to compose themselves and sing in harmony once more.
The Voice of Voices drifted to them. “It is decided. We require innocent blood. The time has come for sacrifice.”