He raised his hands, his fingers curled like claws, and brought them raking down toward his side. Dozens upon dozens of ropes fell severed to the ground and the air filled with oily black smoke. Dura threw back his head and screamed. On it went, his cry scaling upward until Pellin covered his ears.
“We have to help him, Eldest,” Toria said. “He can’t do this on his own.”
He slashed at a group of threads that came for him. Were they weaker now? For a moment, there was a lull in the attack and he gestured at the walls. “Memorize the writing.” Glyphs and runes filled the inside of Dura’s vault just as they had Elieve’s, but Pellin couldn’t tell if they were the same and tentacles of black obscured the writing, a writhing nest of snakes that blocked his vision. “Move. We have to see the rest.”
At his feet, Dura whimpered, huddling over hurts they could neither see nor heal. Weeping, he struggled to his feet, half bent to protect his middle. “Read it,” he said, his face consumed by pain Pellin couldn’t understand. “I’ll help clear the threads.” Screaming as though he eviscerated himself, he wielded his gift, recoiling in agony with the death of each strand.
“This is killing him, Eldest,” Toria cried. “What’s happening?”
Pellin shook his head. “I don’t know. Elieve was absent in the battle for her mind. Some aspect of the gift enables Dura to be present and aid us, but each thread he cuts wounds him in some way.”
Threads shot out of the darkness toward them, pulling Pellin’s attention away and the four of them worked to keep themselves free while Dura aimed strokes of excruciation at the walls of his vault. Pellin turned, taking just enough time to memorize the writing. For a moment almost too brief to be real, he thought he spotted writing that differed from the stylized glyphs and looping whorls of the Darkwater. “There.” He pointed. “Willet, aim there.”
Dura’s mouth stretched in agony as he slashed at the black vines that pulsed where Pellin indicated. The threads receded, recoiling in pain beneath the strikes of Dura’s gift. Then they returned in a boiling mass. “Again!” Pellin extended his hand, aiming the focus of his thoughts.
“There!” he shouted. Dura’s gift opened a section of the wall and Pellin stared. Names. Words he recognized as names stood outlined against the unrelieved black of the wall.
“Eldest!” Toria screamed. “Help us!”
Pellin took just long enough to commit the names to memory before turning. Threads encompassed Fess, working to crawl into his mouth and nose. Already he was choking and though he worked to free himself from the strands, the blows of his gift no longer cut the tentacles that came for him. He coughed, struggling to breathe.
Anger fiercer than any Pellin had experienced in the long expanse of his life flooded through him. Always the innocent died to save the guilty. How many had died for Cesla’s pride already? How many more would perish for the Fayits’ arrogance? No, he would not bear it any longer! He slashed with the fire of his gift, his anger giving him strength that burned through tentacles of evil and left them smoking, writhing to escape.
Given respite from the attack that had choked him, Fess tried to renew his assault. Lines of fatigue etched his face. He had used too much of himself. Beside him, Toria and Mirren stood back to back. The newest member of the Vigil defended against the threads that came leaping at them from the dark, while Toria strove to clear the walls.
Each time the battle stalled or threatened to go against them, Dura would fight, screaming in agony.
“Stop this,” Toria yelled as he fell again. “You’re killing yourself.”
Dura shook his head, scattering tears as he squeezed his eyes shut and pulled a shuddering breath. “You don’t understand. It’s my fault there are so many.”
Sensing their momentary weakness, a cascade of black came for them out of the dark. Pellin’s anger, so fierce a moment ago, guttered, waning, and his heart shuddered, laboring to find its rhythm.
He turned to the prostate figure at his feet. “Willet, I don’t have the strength of Igesia. I’m sorry. We must have your help.”
He didn’t answer.
“He can’t help you. He’s mine, and I’m coming to collect what belongs to me.” The voice emanated from all around them as threads and ropes of black stopped just short of them. Pellin stilled and the rest of the Vigil mirrored him, searching the walls for the speaker.
“He belongs to Aer,” Fess yelled his defiance.
“If he is Aer’s,” the voice mocked, “then let Aer show himself and aid him.”
The threads surrounding them coalesced into a trunk of glossiest black, shimmering in the air, a colossus of evil that threatened to sweep them away. As Pellin watched, the threads unwound to stand suspended in the air once more. Cesla stood among them, his eyes purest black. “If Aer will not deign to show himself, I will.” He smiled. “Greetings, brother.”
“I know you, Atol Bealu,” Pellin spat. “You may wear Cesla’s likeness, but it is no more than a mask.”
“How little you know,” Cesla crooned. “Are you surprised that I claim your kinship even now?” He laughed. “Your brother hasn’t died. He lives still within this shell, horrified at the cost of his pride.” His black eyes glittered. “Like him you will all live and be mine. You cannot win. With every entrance into the forest, my power grows. Even if your defenses hold, you will all belong to me when the Darkwater engulfs your city. Do you think your kings and queens, huddling around you in fear, will save you?”
A realization came to Pellin, and he pulled Fess close and whispered into his mind. “Cesla must be somewhere close. Find
