Chapter the Twenty-eighth

Music rang across the battlefield.
Even the winged monsters glanced up. They did more than that. They shrieked and screeched and buried their heads in their arms- but they couldn’t drown out a single note.
It was a fairy song, a song that banished shadows. And Tamello led it, playing his worn guitar.
"We come through the clouds
To aid in a war!
Who are we?
Reinforcements!

We come with a fury
To protect the Llores!
Who are we?
Defenders!

We come without flutes
They’ve been traded for swords!
Who are we?
A people united!

We come noble and true
To face your horde!
Who are we?
Sky kings!

We come; we’ve been called;
Gathered from shore to shore!
This time, for our freedom,
We’ll fight as never before!
Who are we?
Llorleya’s fairies!"
Some soldiers looked up with tears in their eyes. "They came," they whispered. With renewed vigor, they had at their enemies while the fairies helped them to gain an advantage from the sky- the sky flushed with new dawn behind the clouds, clouds that had begun to rain.
**********
Aria ran to her dropped sword to wield it, cursing her carelessness. Before she could reach it, the creature’s tail lashed around her, pinning her arms to her sides and raising her to its face. She twisted and struggled, but she couldn’t get free.
Gilligan hewed at the goblin-like beasts crowding around him, barely noticing when one would wound him. Only one thought stayed with him in that frenzy, and it was consuming. He had to get through to Aria.
Finally he broke through the rings of attackers and started running toward the giant one. Then, looking past its head, he got a better idea, one that just might work if he could but get there in time.
The monster started to squeeze Aria, suffocating her. She gasped. She had been lost for breath before, in visions, but not like this. Not with this hopeless reality. She could feel her consciousness slipping from her, and knew she lacked the strength to hold on any longer. Everything went black for her.
Then the monster’s grip suddenly slackened, then let go. Gilligan stood on the stairway behind its head, his sword plunged to the hilt in its neck.
The creature dropped Aria, and she fell. Gilligan scrambled back down, praying he would be in time to catch her.
The creature made a last attempt to kill Aria, trying to snap her up in its mouth. But it did nothing worse than scrape a tooth down her arm. Then it collapsed, dead from Gilligan’s heroic strike.
Gilligan ran down the long stairway. He had hated its length going up, but it was worse now, going down. When he finally reached the dead beast, Aria was lying still. Gilligan felt his heart grow cold, as though he too were going to die.
But then he saw her chest rising and falling. The creature’s tail had broken her fall, at least a little. She was alive!
He dropped to his knees by her side. "Can you move?" he whispered. "Has the fall injured you badly?"
Aria said nothing. She was unconscious. When Gilligan moved to pick her up, he saw the long slash in her arm.
The wound did not bleed. Instead, it was grey around the edges of the flayed skin. As he watched, the ashy color spread up her arm. "Poison," he said aloud. "The beast must have poisoned her." The rapidity with which it spread alarmed him just as much as seeing her in the monster’s clutches had. Alarm is really a mild word.
He had to do something. For Llorleya. For Celestia. For Aria. He cradled her in his arms and lifted her. She barely weighed anything at all, and he wondered if she was supposed to be that way or it was a result of the poison. He carried her through the halls, running, sometimes tripping.
Aria had almost died so many times. Not this time. She couldn’t. Not after all they had been through. He loved her.
Why must love hurt so much? he asked himself.
Then he was outside.
The rain from the thundercloud had finally broken. Strange that it had held off falling until Torlith was dead- and until the Queen was also dying.
Gilligan hardly noticed. He also didn’t notice how the sun was shining behind the rain- sun and rain in the sky at once. Another thing he didn’t notice was how the sky was filled with fluttering forms and brilliant, shining wings.
But would he have cared, at a moment like this? Probably not.
"Someone help!" he cried, stumbling.
****
In one night, Loth had fought her way through sweat, fear, doubt, despair, and nightmarish creatures. With dawn had come rain, and with rain, fairies, and with fairies, hope!
Loth was fighting with that hope pumping through her, a fairy on one side, and Rayne (mounted on a stag, wonder of wonders) on the other, when a young man had staggered out of the castle, holding what seemed to be a corpse. When Loth saw the limp body was Aria, everything of the past night- the sweat, fear, doubt, and despair- seemed sharp and horrific, and the dawn, rain, fairies, and hope seemed fuzzy and vague, almost imagined. Her sword faltered, and her mind flashed back to a day on the beach where she had seen the same form of a young woman, lying similarly. That day had changed her life. Would this day reverse it again?
She threw her arm around the stag’s neck to Rayne’s attention. "Rayne! Something’s wrong!" She pointed almost savagely toward the place where Gilligan stood.
Under her dripping red hair, Rayne’s face went completely white. She didn’t even notice that Loth had pronounced her name correctly, but pulled the elf onto the stag behind her and urged him forward to the drawbridge. As though realizing the urgency of the moment, he consented to carry the two with all speed.
Rayne nearly tumbled off the stag before it had stopped. "What happened?!" she cried to Gilligan. More steadily, Loth sprang down.
"No time to explain in detail," said Gilligan. His voice shook with emotion. "She’s been poisoned. Someone needs to get her through the lines of battle to the elf-healers- Now!"
"I’ll go," said Loth immediately.
Gilligan, however, was already determined to go, and said so.
"All right, perhaps a star?" suggested Rayne.
Gilligan shook his head. "We need them here."
"Then they need both of you," said Rayne. Determinedly, she took Aria from Gilligan and lifted her onto the stag. "They can spare me. I’ll go."
No one argued with that tone of voice, but Loth said, "I’ll cover your dash for the elves! Some enemy’s bound to try to cut you off, and I’ll-"
"We’ll!" interrupted Gilligan fiercely.
"be the one- ones- to make sure they don’t!" Loth finished.
Rayne swung on to the stag, though once she had been so frightened of the animal. Amazing, how moments of extreme urgency, especially when it involves the life of someone you love, can dissolve one’s fear- or at least shove it into corners. "Be careful!" she said, turned the stag around, and fled at full speed, trying to go around the chaos of battle.
As Loth had predicted, almost immediately Torlith’s army- winged creatures and Men alike- detached themselves from their slaughter and set after Rayne and Aria.
Gilligan looked at Loth, chin tilted upward fearlessly. "I’ll take that half," he said, motioning to those gathering, "and you can have the other."
Loth nodded, the slightest hint of a smile on her face. "I’ll come help you clean up when I’m done."
But unbeknownst to Gilligan, his half contained the remnant of creatures from inside the castle, who had witnessed the deaths of Torlith and the giant. They had lost heart, if monsters have hearts to lose, and they were unwilling to fight. They fled at Gilligan’s pursuit, scattering to the clouds with screeches of terror.
Not so with Loth’s half.
Maddened with battle, they clouded around and latched themselves onto her, restricting movement. The arc of her sword swings became less wide and finally were crushed altogether. Loth was drowning in a sea of bodies, and under their pull, she began to suffocate.
Gilligan saw what was happening. He abandoned what was left of the fleeing creatures and tried to tear the black forms away from Loth, but they were slick with mud and rain and had a grip of steel. He feared to strike out with his sword, lest he stab Loth accidentally.
That’s when Tyri, bleeding from so many wounds it was a miracle he was conscious, alighted next to Gilligan. The creatures were strong, but the star was stronger. He hauled them off and threw them to the side, where Gilligan would finish them off. In an effort to get away with their kill, they began to squirm and screech.
"Who’s under them?" shouted Tyri over the clamor.
"Loth- it’s Loth," cried Gilligan, running his sword through another Tyri had detached.
"The elf?" asked Tyri; but not waiting for an answer, continued to toss them to Gilligan and asked, "Where’s Aria?"
"Injured- poisoned- Rayne is getting her to the elf-healers now!"
No more beasts remained for Tyri to throw or Gilligan to kill. Loth lay on the ground, her crushed body looked slight and small.
"Loth!" cried Gilligan, kneeling. "Speak, if you still live!"
Loth stirred a little and opened her eyes. "Did anyone get away?" she whispered.
"No," said Gilligan.
"Not one," added Tyri quietly.
Loth smiled. Then her features relaxed and went completely still, and Gilligan ran his hand over her eyes, closing them.
Tyri bowed his great head. "She’s gone?" he asked.
"At least she died content," Gilligan said softly.
Tyri took the elf’s body and laid it aside from the battle. "We’ll take care of her later," he said. "We’ll give her, and the rest, a hero’s remembrance."
********
There was nothing more Rayne could do for Aria. She had brought her to the elves, and promptly been sent away.
The rain was letting up, releasing a sweet, clean smell to wipe away the stench of war, and the fighting was dying down… the tide had turned with the fairies’ help, and Torlith’s host was defeated…
"Where’s Violet?" asked Rayne suddenly, missing her from the crowd.
Tamello spoke in a hushed voice. "She flew right into a flock of the beasts. She killed many, single-handedly! But…" Tamello just looked up, and Rayne followed his gaze.
She saw Bronden in the air, his lame leg swinging lifelessly in the wind. When he saw her below, he came down, the form of the Empress of Laurel Mountain, his sister, in his arms. "She- Violet was always a reckless flier," he said, his voice as broken as the body he held, one that had so recently held something of its own- life.
Rayne knew what the depth in that voice was- it was a path of emptiness and loss, a path she had traveled, a burden of pain she had carried, a wound she had been inflicted with that healed but little over time. "Oh, Bronden…" she whispered miserably.
Gilligan walked up, then, his brown hair matted on his forehead. Tyri walked beside him, too exhausted to fly. Aria had made it to the elves safely, and the battle was over and won, yet they looked defeated.
Rayne didn’t like to make jumps from sorrow to sorrow quickly. But when she saw Gilligan without Loth, she didn’t even have to ask.
Loth, too? she thought. I was right. There’s so much death here. So much hurt and sorrow. Llorleya has exacted its price- it has cost us our very hearts. How is it that we live and they don’t?
Rayne felt tears brushing her cheeks, and stopped asking herself impossible questions.
**********
Aria lay on a cot in the tent of an elf-healer. They could have gone into the castle, but the elves insisted she mustn’t be moved.
The others, beside the elf, in the tent were Gilligan and a star-healer. No one else could be there, as they were getting treated themselves.
All glow had faded from Aria, gathering to the wound. Where the long slash on her arm was, the bright white light poured out, as though it had been behind the veil of her skin, only waiting for an opening to be let out.
This worried Gilligan. "Why does that happen?" he asked the star tending her.
"It’s how stars heal bad wounds. Our bodies concentrate their light in one place," he made an expressive gesture, as though packing something down in his hands, "to heal it. This also puts a sort of stopper on the blood, so it doesn’t all flow out. Our people heal far more easily than either elves or humans or fairies or even merfolk due to this."
Gilligan said, his voice low, "It looks more as though her life were draining from her."
The star did not disagree, but his shoulders slumped.
They fell silent. In a few moments Gill became aware of a faint humming in the room. Steadily it grew, until it seemed to engulf Aria’s sleep-like form in a wall of starsong.
"What’s happening now?" asked Gilligan with new alarm.
The star’s eyes grew wide with horrified surprise. "Her body is making a final attempt to heal her," he said hurriedly.
"What do you mean by ‘final’?" Gilligan looked at Aria again, as though he wanted to break through the wall and pull her out. "Is it very bad, then?"
The star was calling orders to other stars. "Get more help, quickly," he said to the messenger at the door.
"Is it very bad?" asked Gilligan again.
The star steeled himself. "Worse than that. We call it the deathsong."
****