Aurix the Bold

“Are we going to be able to stay another day?” Aurix asked, feasting on bread sopped with the yolk of eggs.

Shlee considered the question. “As much as I’d like to, it may not be the best idea.”

“Why not?” Aurix asked through a mouthful. He washed it down with honeymilk from a heavy stone cup.

Shlee appeared to enjoy watching Aurix slake his hearty appetite. He wore a small smile. “Every place we stay, we put at a certain amount of risk. If the Helm is found, they’ll come for us quickly. The town could be razed for harboring us.”

Aurix remembered his night-haunt all too well. “That’s ridiculous. They’ll hold a whole town responsible just because we stop there? Can’t we just explain? I don’t want anyone to suffer because of me.”

“Aurix, you need to understand, Xu’ul’s Aegis won’t ask questions. There’s nothing rational or honorable in what they do. Once a threat is known, it is simply eliminated.”

“Like Addix under the blue banner.”

Shlee nodded. “Just like. You may not think it significant, but even Jizizoo puts himself at great risk with some of his songs. Calling Xu’ul a squit or a skane is a certain death sentence if discovered.”

“People can’t have their own thoughts or beliefs?”

“Not aloud. Not if against the crown. Not with this Ra.”

Aurix seethed silently for a minute and washed a bitter taste from his mouth with another swallow of milk. “So no one can have an original idea? Nothing can be made better?”

Shlee shrugged, casting a long shadow over the table at which they sat in the inn. “Many believe Xu’ul is infallible—most of all Xu’ul himself. To suggest anything other than what is, amounts to high treason.”

Jizizoo wandered over, whistling to himself. He cleared the empty stoneware from the table. “Can I get you lads summore? There be plenty. The missus cooks for a dozen whether we have guests or not.” He patted his prodigious stomach as if to prove the point.

“As good as it was, I’m stuffed,” Shlee said. “Aurix?”

“I couldn’t eat another bite, but it was excellent. Thank you.”

The bard leaned up against the table and raised an eyebrow. “You boys have fun last night?”

Aurix said, “That may have been the most fun I’ve ever had.”

Jizizoo laughed heartily. The table shook, seeming to laugh with him. “Ye needs to get out more, methinks, lad.”

“The music was excellent,” Shlee said. “I’ve only known one other man that could sing and play like that.”

“If it weren’t my great grampee, then you sir, are wrong. But if ye send that man to me I’ll rightly teach ’im.” Jizizoo winked.

“I only wish I could,” Shlee said.

Jizizoo nodded like he knew exactly what that meant. “Where ye be headin’?”

Aurix was shocked when Shlee answered truthfully. “Grimvale. Then north to Glynn.”

Jizizoo raised his eyebrows high. He set the dishes back down on the table and took a seat in one of the empty chairs. “Are ye sure ye want to be doin’ that, lads. A dang’rous path, that.”

Shlee said nothing, so Aurix nodded. “We’re quite sure.”

Jizizoo stroked his beard and looked carefully at Shlee. “A terrible darkness shall befall the realm—but when all hope seems gone, a light yet lives on—in the infinite wisdom held in Ulixes Helm,” he recited.

Shlee’s mouth turned up in a slight smile, and he dipped his head in affirmation.

Jizizoo turned and stared at Aurix with his mouth open. He said nothing for a full minute. Then, “No woman or man can e’er hope to stand once the plague of blood has befallen the land.” He looked back at Shlee, his eyes wide.

“What?” Aurix asked. “What is all that?”

The two men ignored him and just stared at each other. Aurix looked back and forth at them and tried to grasp bits of what was passing between them.

“It was me great grampee, weren’t it?”

“It was,” Shlee said.

Another silence fell over the table.

Aurix looked at them helplessly. “What? For Xod’s sake, what?”

“Great bards aren’t simply musicians, Aurix,” Shlee said. “They’re historians. They’re protectors of knowledge. Jizizoo has a new history to compose.”

“Are ye sure?” Jizizoo asked, his face a mask of incredulity.

“Quite,” Shlee said.

“I’m not going to be king,” Aurix said, as if that might clear things up.

Jizizoo started to laugh but stopped himself. He then looked at Aurix seriously. “No?”

“No.”

“Then what will ye do, sire?”

Aurix felt his face getting hot as the two men looked at him expecting an answer that he didn’t have.

“I don’t—” his thought was cut off by a massive ear-splitting shriek and rumble that shook the floor of the inn. Aurix instinctively put his hands on the surface of the table and wondered if it was another earthquake.

“Prolly a landslide,” Jizizoo said, “They—“

Then the screams started. A crash louder than anything Aurix had ever heard followed. The walls of the inn shook and the stoneware on the table trembled.

Before the tremors had ceased, Jizizoo was on his feet and running toward the door. Aurix sprinted after him. He could hear Shlee hobbling along behind as quickly as his 381 revolutions would allow.

Jizizoo swung the door open on sheer pandemonium. The air was thick with dirt and dust. People ran in all directions, confused and choking, their faces dark with grime. Blood trickled down the faces and arms of a few; their eyes were wide with shock and spilling tears.

“What’s happening?” Jizizoo shouted into the chaos.

Suddenly, Petra was there next to them. It vaguely registered in Aurix’s brain that she must be Jizizoo’s wife.

“Ziz, get everyone inside!” Petra ran into the slowly settling cloud. She stopped and quickly checked on the people that looked injured and told them to go inside the inn and wait. She ran against the crowd yelling, “To the inn!”

Aurix ran after her without a thought. Looking back, he saw that Shlee and Jizizoo stayed behind and were guiding people inside to safety.

The rumbling finally ceased, and most of the screams on the air faded into choked sobs. But ahead, Aurix heard a few unbroken wails for help. He pulled alongside Petra. She glanced at him gratefully, and then a thick haze of dust obscured her face. Half blind, they ran toward the sound of the continuing screams. Based on direction and distance, Aurix guessed they were coming from the square.

He arrived half a dozen steps before Petra did and slipped on rocks that hadn’t been there the day before. He fell into a sea of rubble. His hands came away bloody from jagged stones.

“Careful,” he yelled out, unsure if anyone could hear him over the screams.

Petra pulled up, just short of the rock pile. She touched his shoulder. “Are you alright?”

“Fine. Keep going.”

“My Gods,” he heard her say over the commotion. She skirted the piles of stone to the left, so he moved to the right. The screaming grew louder. The air cleared.

The collapse of the massive rock formation in the square was near total. It was now little more than a heap of broken grey boulders in the middle of Cragshadow.

Aurix reached the two screaming boys first. They were about his age. A few more adults had started to gather. One of the boy’s legs had been pinned beneath the slide. His eyes were squinted in agony, and tears cut streaks through the dirt on his face, but he was pointing toward the pile. “Help her! Dera’s under there.” The second boy was in shock and still screaming at the top of his lungs.

Petra arrived from the other side of the collapse and took the wailing boy by the shoulders. She spoke to him in a calm voice, trying to ease him out of his shock. When that didn’t work, she slapped him across the face. He fell silent. She sent him to the inn with a woman who had blood trickling down her cheeks.

Aurix waved over a few of the remaining adults and directed them to start clearing the rubble from around the boy.

He resisted their assistance. “Help Dera first! She was climbing. Oh, Gods!”

Aurix recognized the boy as one of the performers from the night before. “Let’s get you out of there first.” He didn’t say what he thought of Dera’s chances. “We can focus on Dera once you’re safe. What’s your name?”

“Skean,” he said, breathless and wincing. “I want to help.” He shrieked when his leg shifted as three men tossed rocks off of him. Aurix was sure his leg was broken and probably shattered beneath the rubble.

“I understand,” Aurix said to him. “But you can’t do anything for her while you’re pinned down like that. All right?”

Skean nodded and roared in pain again.

Petra’s eyes were wet, but she wasted no time. She separated her townsfolk into the injured and the not. Those with injuries she sent to the inn. “The rest of you—get to the stables. Bring the braka first, then the caples. If you come across anyone else, have them bring all the wagons and rope they can find. And the miners. Someone fetch the miners.”

Everyone quickly disappeared in different directions.

There was no way to tell how many people might be trapped under the rocks and boulders with Dera, but if anyone else was under the debris, Aurix doubted they’d survived. “Skean, was there anyone else around when it came down?”

He shook his head. “It was just the three of us over here, but I couldn’t see the other side. Fex! I can still hear her screaming in my head. C’mon!” Skean gritted his teeth as the three men tried to lift a series of boulders from his leg.

The men’s faces turned red as they strained against the weight. Veins stood out in their necks and arms. One of the men looked over at Aurix and gave an almost imperceptible shake of the head while Skean tucked his chin into his chest and roared again. He was shaking all over.

Petra appeared at Aurix’s side. “Clear all the smaller rocks,” she instructed them. “A few braka might be able to pull the bigger ones away, but we’ll need space to get ropes around them.” She knelt down next to Aurix while he tossed rocks away from Skean’s leg and foot. She tore several long strips of cloth from the hem of her skirt and wrapped his lacerated hands.

“Could anyone have survived that?” he asked Petra quietly, nodding toward the massive mound of shattered block and stone a dozen feet away. Aurix guessed the pile was at least twenty-five feet high.

She looked doubtful, but said, “If anyone could have, it would be Desidera. I’ve never known anyone so at home on the rocks. She was free climbing at 3-revolutions-old. Always higher. Always steeper. We’re all at home in the mountains, but she’s a natural—like a fish in water.”

Aurix nodded, but chewed nervously at the inside of his cheek. He didn’t like her odds.

“You should go have your hands looked at,” Petra told him. “You’re a guest here. You don’t have to do this.”

Aurix ignored her and kept working at the smaller shards wedged between the boulders atop Skean’s knee. “Her parents?”

Petra shook her head, her silver hair brown with dirt and pulverized stone. “The Cleaving.”

Tears stung Aurix’s eyes. They burned from the thick haze on the air, and he was sure that they were as red as the Ixian Plain.

“Petra!” a man called, running across the square toward them. “My Gods. I heard it echo off the mountains a mile away.” His graying hair and face were wet with sweat. “I ran all the way. Is everyone all right?”

“Dera,” she said. “She’s under what’s left of the sarsens.”

He took a look, and his flushed cheeks instantly paled. “Oh slag.”

“Get the rest of your men, Valen,” she said. “Have them bring their tools. Do whatever you can to stabilize it. We’ll use the animals to haul away the rubble. We should see if she can hear us. We’ll try before we start digging.”

His jaw was set and his face was grim, but he nodded, and raced off again.

The first of the braka arrived. Aurix coordinated the efforts to free Skean while Petra instructed those that had returned as well as several newcomers. Some raced off to the inn to help with the wounded, others went to gather whatever tools and riggings could be quickly retrieved.

It took more than an arc to free Skean. His leg was blue and bloody and bent at a strange angle. The bone hadn’t pierced the skin, but Aurix could see it jutting beneath the surface waiting for the slightest opportunity. With no small amount of persuading, Skean allowed himself to be carried off to the inn where Shlee and Jizizoo and now several others were still treating a variety of minor injuries.

Everyone took a short break while Valen tapped a pattern on the largest of the rocks with a dirty iron hammer. When he called out for Dera, everyone in the square added his or her voice. When the echoes finally faded, all that remained was a terrible, empty silence.

When he next tapped his hammer on the stone, the distant cry of a rook nesting on the mountainside was his only answer.

The miner frowned, but he prepared to try once more.

Aurix felt sure the man was merely delaying the inevitable declaration of Dera’s near-certain demise beneath the avalanche. He could hardly blame him.

This time the miner draped a thin piece of cloth over his hammer to deaden the echo and pressed his ear flat against the stone. He held his left hand out toward the crowd to silence them and rapped with the right, the sound barely louder than the muffled pop of knuckles cracking.

The whole of the town held its breath. The hush was absolute. Even the rook fell quiet. Time stretched, an eternity cradled in the arms of a few short seconds. Aurix was deaf to everything but the blood crashing in his ears and his heart slamming in his ribcage.

The old miner closed his eyes. His cheeks rose and wrinkles carved bottomless chasms into his forehead and face as he squeezed them tight in concentration. Then he became as still as the stone he leaned against.

No one moved.

It wasn’t until after the cheer erupted that Aurix realized the old man was smiling.

Food and water was passed around, and everyone worked in shifts at the direction and close supervision of the miners. The first priority was to make sure Dera had air. That meant clearing an opening near the base of the remaining megalith without disrupting the stability of the structure itself. It was slow and painstaking, and the process took several arcs. Twice the earth shifted and settled, risking further collapse, and all in Cragshadow held their collective breath again until the danger had subsided.

Aurix remained part of the rescue efforts well into the night. At some point, someone had given him a pair of thick gloves to protect his bloody fingers, but he didn’t remember exactly when that was, or whose they were. His entire being was focused on saving Dera from being crushed beneath the boulders. He rested only long enough to drink—mint water at first, and (as the day wore on) a weak ale that helped to numb the pain in his hands—and to water and feed Nyx while the wagon strapped to her was filled.

Petra managed the entire process almost effortlessly. She had teams of people guiding the animals to a dumpsite outside of the city walls. Before darkfall, others set up torches around the square to light the endeavor. She divided the rescuers into groups, and scheduled rotations of rest and work so that that rescue efforts could continue non-stop throughout the night. Some had been relegated to the Great Hall to keep food and drink coming for the workers. Those skilled in healing were sent to the inn to stitch cuts and ice wounds and keep Skean and others as comfortable as their injuries would allow. All of Cragshadow was moving a small mountain one piece at a time, but moving it they were.

Just before darkfall, Jizizoo and Shlee finally made their way to the site. By then, they’d both heard what had happened, but seeing it firsthand still came as quite a shock. Jizizoo offered to take over for Petra so she could go and get some rest. She smiled wearily, but shook her head. Instead, she asked him to get his lute and sing for Dera and those working to save her.

Shlee, feeling more than a little bit helpless, checked on Aurix and all but begged him to take a break. Aurix refused and kept working at the rocks like one possessed.

It was midnight when they finally broke through. A filthy, bloody hand peeked through the dirt and stone. Petra picked her way through the rubble and gently wrapped her hand around Dera’s fingers. When those fingers squeezed back, a cheer lifted into the night over Jizizoo’s rhythmic song.

The success invigorated the townsfolk, and they uncovered the girl’s arm almost to the shoulder in a few brief minutes. But the enthusiasm was short lived. Her arm was threaded between two huge boulders and there was no way that she would be able to be extracted from their current angle of attack.

Aurix was dizzy with exhaustion. His vision swam, and his head ached. After the third shift change, he finally allowed Shlee to lead him back to the inn.

Skean was there, his face a shade of gray eerily similar to the pile of rock on top of his friend. His leg had been set, splinted and wrapped. He looked at Aurix hopefully, a splotch of color rising in his ashen cheeks. When Aurix shook his head, he looked utterly crestfallen.

The only thing Aurix’s body wanted was rest, but there was one more thing he felt he must do. After a brief stop in his room, he slung one of Skean’s wiry arms over his shoulder and helped him all the way back to the site of the avalanche and into the rubble.

Tears slipped down the boy’s cheeks as he took Dera’s hand.

Dera held onto it like a lifeline.

Aurix slipped the glimstone between their palms. When Skean lifted his hand to see what it was, the site was illuminated in a red glow.

When Aurix woke after six uninterrupted arcs, his hands throbbed and his face stung. He sat up too fast and groaned with the effort. His back burned and ached like a fury’s scream.

“Easy,” Shlee said from a chair at his bedside.

“Did they get her?”

“Not yet, I’m afraid. She’s mostly uncovered now. They’ve brought her water and food, but she’s still pinned under some of the larger boulders. The miners are trying to figure out how to move them without causing the others to fall.”

“Drak.” With an effort, Aurix straightened his stiff fingers and then curled them into tight fists. They were wrapped with a gauzy material, and by the smell someone had applied yarrow paste to them. He tried to stand, but Shlee held up a hand.

“Take it slow. You collapsed last night.”

“Huh?” It dawned on him that he didn’t remember anything at all after getting Skean and the glimstone back to Dera.

Shlee pointed to Aurix’s face.

Aurix put his fingers up to his tender cheek and winced. From the feel of it, he had a large welt and cut underneath his left eye. “Fex. What happened?”

“You worked yourself too hard. As you stood up, you fell into one of the standing stones. A few of us brought you back here and patched you up a bit.”

“Gods.”

“You weren’t the only one. At least three others collapsed overnight.”

Aurix kept working his fingers until the stiffness loosened. He shook his head, unsure what to say. Against the wishes of every bone and muscle in his body, he forced himself to stand, and stretched until he started to loosen up.

Shlee retrieved a large mug filled with honeymilk from the floor near his feet and held it out. Aurix drank it down without pause for breath.

“There’s food on the table. Fruit and meat and bread. You’ll need it.”

“Thank you, Shlee,” Aurix said.

“Our time is drawing short.”

Aurix nodded. “Yes, as is hers.”

“I understand your need to see this through. I just want to make sure that you don’t forget the greater concern. The efforts of one likely won’t change Dera’s fate, but if we don’t retrieve the Helm, the fates of all may be lost.”

“And if we do nothing here, all might as well be lost.”

Shlee nodded solemnly. “I know. What we’ve done here matters. But I fear for this place, Aurix. If the town is razed because we didn’t leave in time, many more than just Dera will die.”

Aurix stood before Shlee, his back straight. “You told Jizizoo that you were sure about me. If that’s indeed true then we need not fear what is to come.”

Shlee smiled, a bit sadly, Aurix thought. “If only it were that simple. A crown does not a king make. His realm is what defines him. You say you don’t want the throne, but would you hand over a burning wasteland to Xu’ul’s successor? King of Nothing?”

“I would hand him a realm whose people were willing to risk everything to help one another. That’s the only realm worth ruling.”

“Ah, yes. The wisdom of youth. Nothing is so black and white as that, Aurix. There are greys. There are choices. Wrong answers. Consequences. Someday, it will be clear to you only that nothing is clear.”

“Then I will follow what I believe to be the just path. That’s all that I can do. And today, the just path is to help get Dera out of that pile of rock.”

“Yes. I’m sure you’re right.” Shlee’s jaw trembled. He moved aside. “Eat. Then let us go and see what can be done for Dera.”

When they arrived the torches were burning themselves out in the pale dim of morning. There were still dozens of people gathered at the spot, though most weren’t doing much at that moment. Jizizoo played on, though his voice was hoarse and his fingertips bled on the strings of his lute. Nyx had been taken back to the stable to rest, but other braka and caples still pulled wagonloads of debris outside of the city.

Now that the majority of smaller fragments had been removed, Aurix could clearly see their problem. The remains of the megalith were balanced perilously against one another over Dera’s body. Any attempt to shift the stones would almost certainly cause the others to fall, crushing the girl beneath hundreds of tons of rock. She was lying prone in the dirt with only enough room to lift her head a few inches off the ground.

Skean still had Dera’s hand in his, a braka blanket draped over his shoulders. He spoke to Dera quietly through a small gap in the stones near her face.

Aurix couldn’t be sure, but he thought—amazingly—that she was smiling. If she was in pain, she wasn’t showing it.

Half a dozen miners were discussing the options with Petra. Aurix’s mind rotated through the only three possibilities he could see—over, under, or through. He assumed those were the same choices they were giving Cragshadow’s mayor.

Shlee appeared next to Aurix, having found a place to say his morning prayers. His cheeks were wet above his thin white stubble.

“Can they go under? Tunnel her out?” he asked the old man.

“Perhaps, but the soil here is very rocky. And they’d need to go deep enough to keep the sarsens from sinking and crushing her. It may be the safest way, but it’s also the most uncertain. And it would take many days.”

“How long would it take to get through them?”

Aurix could see the sharp angles of Shlee’s jaw as it clenched. In the shadows of the dawn and the flickering torchlight, he looked decidedly skeletal. “Without the option of blasting? Weeks.”

“She doesn’t have weeks. She doesn’t even have days,” Aurix whispered.

“No, she doesn’t.”

“And moving them could cause them to fall.”

Shlee nodded grimly, his jaw set even tighter.

“What’s her best chance?” Aurix asked.

Shlee shrugged. “Flux. Or a miracle. Barring that, I think the only hope is to move them, but it’s also the riskiest.”

“Can we find someone that can use flux in time?”

“Probably not. And a single fluxen wouldn’t suffice in any case. It would require more energy than one could produce. Three perhaps—one for each of the sarsens.”

Aurix swallowed down his frustration and tried to think. “What about the Helm? How long would it take us to get it?”

“Nearly a week, there and back. And that’s barring lightning storms, which are common over Grimvale. And though the Helm would provide us with an answer, it may not be one that we could implement quickly enough.”

“Drak! There has to be a way. If the stones could be braced for just a few seconds, and one lifted…”

“I’m sure that is what they are discussing. But lifting the stone atop her, even for a moment will be a massive undertaking. It must weigh fifty tons, if a pound. And it could shatter.”

A growing sense of unease and helplessness was gnawing at Aurix’s stomach. “It was the earthquake, wasn’t it?”

“That megalith stood in the square when I was a boy. I scaled it myself a time or two. I find it hard to believe that it came down without help.”

They watched Valen make a few gestures with his hands. A few of the others nodded—slowly, if not confidently, another shrugged with his hands out in front of him. Petra’s eyes were narrowed with concern, but she too nodded and dismissed the men.

The plan was set. The miners would find, shape and position a stone plinth that they hoped would support two of the massive stones while an attempt was made to lift the third just high enough and long enough for Dera to be pulled to safety. But raising that boulder even the few inches they needed would require a Maximillian effort, and required another engineering project altogether. A sturdy structure would need to be erected over the fallen sarsens to which a pulley wheel could be attached, and threaded with rope. That rope would be secured around the boulder at one end and tied off with a series of dynox rings on the other. More ropes could then be threaded through those rings and tied to animal and man alike. The entire city of Cragshadow would work together to raise a fifty-ton boulder the few inches they’d need to pull Dera to freedom.

No one questioned the strategy. They were all given jobs to do and went to work quickly. Skean explained the plan to Dera, and she bravely joked about how her last bite of fruit pie at the Hall two nights earlier must have been one too many for the megalith—and, if everyone just calmed down and waited a few days she’d be skinny enough to squeeze out of her stone prison. Aurix admired her pluck, but knew she was probably scared to death.

The sounds of hammers on stone and wood and iron rang out all day. Special harnesses were made. Incredible lengths of rope were fashioned from pooja vine. Stone was hewn with gleaming, dynox chisels. Shlee and Aurix gathered supplies and helped as much as they could with the construction of the massive winch structure. The work was laborious and excruciatingly slow.

Nova rose with the afternoon. Aurix felt a shiver begin at the bottom of his spine and crawl up his back and neck like an orbweaver scrambling for a captured fly. He looked up at the sky—his eyes grew wide. “Oh, no. No,” he muttered under his breath.

Next to him on a scaffold, Shlee eyed him warily.

“Storm,” he whispered

Shlee closed his eyes and sighed in a way that left the withered old man appearing even more deflated. “How long?”

“After nightfall.”

“Go tell Petra,” he said. Aurix thought Shlee’s hammer fell just a bit faster.

The mayor smiled wearily at Aurix as he approached. He doubted anyone had ever looked quite so tired in all of time.

“A storm is coming, Petra,” he said.

The smile drifted from her lips like chickseed fluff on the wind. She didn’t waste time with doubt. “When?”

“An arc after Shura sets. Maybe two. Several inches, I think.”

“Oh, Gods. She’ll drown, and that’s if the stones hold.” She checked Nova’s position in the sky. They had six arcs at most. “Thank you, Aurix,” she put a hand on his shoulder, then ran across the square to where the miners were busy shaping a stone obelisk.

Even from where he stood, Aurix could hear them swearing.

Word spread quickly, and everyone redoubled their efforts, even though they all knew there wouldn’t be enough time. The structure was only half built, and they wouldn’t have nearly enough rope by darkfall. But no one gave up. No one ate.

A new plan was hastily formed. The pulley and the logs to which it was affixed would have to be balanced across the two remaining standing stones. This would jeopardize the already tenuous stability of the structure, especially once they began to bear weight of the fallen stone, but it would have to do. One thing was certain—they would only get one shot.

It took more than twenty men to carry the twelve-foot plinth into the thick residue of dirt and dust created by the rockfall. They positioned it at an angle so that it braced one of the massive standing stones with no more than a forearm’s length of clearance between it and the stone that had to be raised. The vaguely pyramidal-shaped column sank a few inches into the earth under it’s own weight. Once settled—and dwarfed as it was by the other stones of the megalith—it looked impossibly inadequate to the task at hand. Aurix tried not to think that the structure might soon be nothing more than a cairn for Dera.

Lightning ravaged the sky to the west—searing, white-hot scars on a rapidly deepening bruise of dusk. Ominous clouds gathered, dark on the horizon. They obscured the sunset and rolled toward Cragshadow like smoke belched from a great and furious dragon.

Three long ropes were braided together, looped around the top of the fallen stone and threaded through the pulley wheel. On the opposite end, the three rope ends were secured to thick dynox rings, through which more rope and then several harnesses were secured. A small army of braka were herded into town and rigged with the harnesses, while a dozen or so caples were brought in from the west, nervous, white-eyed and whinnying with the rising wind and flashing sky.

Nyx was among them. But for the flickering lightning, she was almost impossible to see in the settling dark. She snorted and hoofed at the ground as she waited in line to be strapped to a waiting harness.

“Oh,” Aurix said aloud, a split second before his mind had even caught up to his mouth. “Oh! Wait!” He ran toward the stablehand that had led her into the square.

Nyx neighed when she saw him and tossed her head.

“Give her to me,” Aurix said.

“We’ll be needin’ all the help we can get,” the hand said. He had to shout to be heard over the rising wind.

“I know that. Give her to me!”

A voice spoke behind him, barely audible. “Please, Aurix. We’ll only get one chance.“

He turned and saw Petra, her hair flying in the wind.

He smiled at her in the failing light. “Trust me. Loosen two harnesses in the middle.” He took hold of Nyx. “And wait for me. Don’t do anything until I’m back.”

“We don’t have time!” Petra said. As if to reinforce her words, a raindrop landed on Aurix’s forehead and dripped down the bridge of his nose.

“Be ready. Have Skean and Jizizoo keep her head out of the water!” He led Nyx outside the city walls at a run.

Petra ran to her husband at the fallen stones and told him what Aurix had told her. “I don’t think we should wait,” she said.

The rain came down in light sheets, carried on gusts of wind, but it was picking up by the minute.

Jizizoo’s beard held drops of rain that gleamed in the glow of the glimstone and the bright lightning strikes. “Wait fer ’im, Pet.”

Petra could barely make out her husband nodding in the glim. She’d never once doubted the man she loved so dearly before, and she wasn’t about to start now. She put a hand on his fuzzy cheek. “Okay. Dera, are you ready to get out of there, hon?”

“That’d be great,” she said, her teeth chattering. “It’s a little cold.”

“We’ll get you warmed up soon. Hang in there.” She took Jizizoo’s cheeks in her hands, pulled him to his feet and kissed him on the lips. “Be careful, husband. If they fall…”

“I know, Pet,” he whispered to her.

She put her lips to his ear. “Don’t be a hero, Ziz. You can’t stop a fifty-ton boulder.” She turned to the boy that had been next to the collapsed boulders every minute since the night before. “Skean, you stay back when it’s time.”

He nodded. “Don’t worry about me. Just get her out.”

Petra ran back to the sea of beast and bodies and rope and helped Shlee rearrange the harnessed animals. The air smelled of scorched metal. The lightning was drawing too close for comfort. The rain fell in ever-larger drops. With each passing minute, Dera’s time grew shorter.

“I hope your boy knows what he’s doing,” she shouted to Shlee, but the sound was whisked away on the wind and masked by a crack of thunder.

Everyone was in position, awaiting the signal. They were all soaked and dirty and miserable, their teeth clenched tightly together or chattering. No one complained. Every one of them was about to pour all of the energy and strength they had left into a fleeting few seconds that would determine the fate of one girl. Petra loved them for it.

Lightning flashed. Petra thought she saw something moving—no, lumbering—just beyond the boulders that encircled the town, but when she turned toward it there was only darkness. She chalked it up to an overwrought imagination brought on by nearly thirty-six straight arcs of stress and no sleep. She took up her own rope. They couldn’t wait much longer.

She felt a shudder in the ground beneath her feet, no more than a faint tremble. That was odd, because she’d seen no lightning and heard no thunder. It came again. And again. Petra had a moment of panic, thinking perhaps they were the precursor of yet another earthquake or an aftershock that might topple the rest of the rock formation onto her husband, Skean and Dera. Then she realized it was too rhythmic, much like slow, plodding footsteps.

A murmur went up among the townsfolk. Heads turned from side to side. Petra squinted to see, but the night outside of the glimstone’s light was now as thick and black as ink.

Lightning arced across the sky. Petra gasped. Someone screamed and the murmur grew in volume until it rumbled like the earth. Ropes grew slack as people pulled back.

“It’s okay! Everyone stay where you are!” Aurix yelled into the darkness. “Petra! Shlee! Help me!”

Petra could hardly believe what she’d just seen, but she dropped her rope and ran to the boy. Another lightning flash illuminated the scene again, and then there was no doubt, only astonishment.

Aurix cautiously led a monstrous black behemoth around the sea of people by one of its long white tusks. The behemoth stood at least ten feet high at the shoulder, its legs as big around as a full-grown man. Mud squelched beneath its feet, and behind it, small pools formed in impressions in the earth sixteen-inches across and two inches deep.

Mouths hung open in awe, and though everyone kept hold of their ropes, the crowd kept its distance from the massive beast. The braka and caples hardly seemed bothered at all by the presence of the slow, plodding animal despite being dwarfed by something nearly twice their size.

The rain was coming down harder now. Everyone was soaked to the bone. Lightning flared every few seconds. This helped with visibility, but the thunder came in a nearly constant low rumble that made it hard to be heard without shouting.

Petra helped Aurix and Shlee slip a harness around each of the behemoth’s front legs, and raised them as high as they could. They strapped them together across the beast’s chest. The mammoth animal seemed to understand exactly what was needed of it and cooperated with their efforts. It raised its legs and even knelt down so that—with a boost—Aurix could climb atop it and secure another set of straps behind its massive head.

Jizizoo’s voice rang out between the rolling grumble of thunder. “Better ’urry, Pet!”

Aurix leapt down from Nyx’s back and found a free rope end. Man and beast gathered around the behemoth.

Shlee and a few town elders too frail to pull stood behind and beside the braka and caples to prod them forward when the time came.

“Tauten your ropes!” Petra called out. The cry was echoed along the crowd.

Everyone crushed forward a step or two. Some wrapped the ropes around their waist. Others slung them over their shoulders.

“Remember,” Petra yelled, “we only need a few seconds. On three, pull with all of your might. Press the animals forward. Scream like the Rilx, so Ziz will know when to pull Dera free.”

Aurix’s heart raced in his chest. He was nervous. If this didn’t work, Dera would be dead in a few minutes, either crushed or drowned. He could only imagine how much more the town of Cragshadow felt the apprehension, having all taken responsibility for the pretty acrobat when her parents died in The Cleaving.

“One!”

Aurix closed his eyes. Collectively, the whole town exhaled.

“Two!”

The sound of everyone inhaling a deep breath was audible over the patter of rain and rumbling thunder.

“Three!”

A mighty roar went up from the crowd. Nyx leaned forward with her trunk raised and trumpeted into the blackness. The sky blazed with lightning that went on for an impossibly long time. Nothing seemed to be happening, no one seemed to move. Then it fell dark once again.

Aurix knew all was lost. Dera would die not more than ten yards from where they all labored against their ropes. The red faces, straining muscles, and puffed out cheeks of the townsfolk would all amount to nothing. Rainwater ran into his mouth as he yelled and he found it salty with his tears.

There was an ear-shattering crack from behind them. Aurix winced as his mind conjured up a horrifying image of Dera being crushed beneath the boulders. The crowd fell silent at once. There was another noise, a long rumble that was higher in pitch than the crackling thunder. The ground shook again, but whether from the storm, or the boulders, or Nyx, Aurix wasn’t sure. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know.

Instinctively, he and many others turned toward the rock formation, but stared only into darkness. The light from his glimstone had disappeared. There was a huge thud that shook the ground beneath their feet. Then came a crash and the sound of stone shattering, followed by another massive thud.

A woman nearby gasped and said, “Oh no!”

There was a brief silence, and then one more earth-rattling whhoomp.

Thunder and echoes of the collapse rolled down from the mountainside for several more seconds.

Petra tried to shout over the cacophony, but her voice was drowned out. “Ziz! Ziz!” She dropped her rope and ran toward the center of the square. A few went with her, but most stood in a paralyzed hush, waiting.

A voice came through the darkness, but all Aurix could make out was “—er!” Then the thunder ceased, and it came again. It was Jizizoo shouting, “Got ’er! I got ’er!”

The lightning flashed and the full extent of the damage in the square could be seen. Nearly all of the remaining standing stones had fallen to the earth. Off to one side Jizizoo danced with Dera in his arms. Hers were wrapped around the bard’s neck. She was laughing. She opened her fist; red light poured through her fingers, illuminating their merriment.

The triumphant cheer that followed completely vanquished the next clap of thunder.

Everyone was far too exhausted and wet to celebrate. Most raced home to shed their soaked clothes and collapse beneath their braka furs while the storm spat itself out. Not an arc after Dera had been pulled to safety, all of Cragshadow slept the sleep of the dead, and the storm had slipped to the east. Aurix stayed with Nyx through her transition back to caple from behemoth, and returned her to the stable. By that time, even the stablehand had found a dry plot of hay and a blanket to curl up under. If his snores were any indication, the animals would not have a peaceful night.

Aurix was as exhausted as he could ever remember being. He staggered back to the inn through a city shrouded in silence and darkness, and let himself in. The warmth of the fire in the great room embraced him almost immediately. He left puddles behind him as he crossed the room and sat on the floor before the hearth, shivering.

A whisper cut through the dense quiet, “Hey.”

“Gods!” he hissed, barely biting back a shout.

Desidera stifled a giggle from the corner. Shadows played on her freshly washed pink cheeks. Scratches and bruises marred her skin, but if they pained her, she didn’t let on. Her hair was still wet from her bath and she was wrapped in a braka fur blanket.

“How are you feeling?” Aurix asked.

“I’m good.” She nodded—whether to convince herself or him, Aurix wasn’t sure. “My ankle is broken. They said I might walk a little funny now, since they couldn’t set it right away. I’m not worried though. I’m pretty agile.” As if to prove it, she rose and hopped nimbly over to him on one foot and sat down.

For a minute, they both just stared into the fire and basked in its warmth.

“Where’s Skean?” Aurix asked her.

“Home. His dad insisted.”

“I think he loves you.”

If she blushed, Aurix couldn’t see it in the firelight. “Ya think?” she asked and laughed quietly. In trying to suppress it, she snorted, which set them both off on a bout of barely contained hysterics. All the stress of the previous few days bled from them while tears rolled down their cheeks. As soon as they thought they had themselves under control, Dera got the hiccups, which sent them into fits again.

Aurix’s sides hurt when they finally got a grip.

Dera’s hand emerged from the furs. In it was the glimstone. In the firelight, it cast a dull purple glow around them. “I’m not sure why you helped, but I’m in your debt.” She put the pebble into Aurix’s hand.

Aurix shook his head. “There’s no debt to be repaid, Dera. I’m just glad you’re okay.”

“It wouldn’t have worked without your Shapebreaker. I’d be dead right now.”

“The town would have figured something out.”

She leaned over and put her head on his shoulder. Her hair smelled of flowers. “Thank you. We’ll never forget this.”

“I’m just glad we could help.”

“How long will you stay?”

“Not long. We’ll leave the morning after next, I would think.” He felt her body slump against his just a little when he answered.

“There will be a celebration tomorrow. At least you’ll be here for that. Where will you go?”

The floral scent was making Aurix lightheaded. He wasn’t sure how exactly how to answer her. He decided not to bother with deception. “Glynn. But we have a stop to make in Grimvale first.”

Her head slipped over his shoulder as she nodded. She sniffed. She was quiet for a minute before she said, “Can I ask you for a favor?”

“Of course.”

She raised her head and looked over at him. Tears glittered on her cheeks like tumbling jewels in the firelight. She turned her body toward him and opened her arms.

He held her as she sobbed against his shoulder for almost half an arc. Somehow Aurix understood. He was a haven where she didn’t need to be brave. All of her terror and shock and pain could be shed, and would leave Cragshadow with him in a few days—released, if not forgotten. He let her cry.

“Celebration” had been an understatement. As much revelry as there’d been their first night in Cragshadow, it was eclipsed by the festivities of that day. An all-day feast in the Hall kept everyone uncomfortably stuffed. There was music and dancing and ale and laughter in abundance. Dera and Skean were all but inseparable, and Aurix caught them holding hands more than once. Every now and again, Dera slipped him sincere, grateful smiles that warmed him inside more than the food and drink.

After a boisterous midday swim, many went to see the final devastation in the town square in the light of day. A single stone remained upright, standing sentinel over the others, which lay like slain giants, broken and shattered. The massive slab that the town had raised had not only been lifted, but it had been completely pulled free of the stones that had pinned it in place. Those sarsens then collapsed onto the handmade plinth, which buttressed their weight for the critical few seconds needed to slide Dera free, before toppling to the earth and smashing the obelisk beneath them.

Aurix tried not to imagine Dera’s body beneath the destruction, but had a hard time keeping his mind from the gruesome outcome that she’d barely avoided. From the somber mood of the people of Cragshadow at the site, he knew he wasn’t the only one whose mind was on the morbid possibility. He wondered if they’d leave the stones as they’d fallen, or if they would remove them altogether. He vowed to return someday to find out.

After dinner, Petra presented Aurix and Shlee with symbols representing honor forged by the town’s blacksmiths from the rings of dynox that had been used in Dera’s rescue. They were told that with them, they would always be welcome in Cragshadow no matter the peril or consequence that might follow them. Aurix wondered if they’d still feel the same if they knew what he and Shlee were planning.

Dera got around quite well on a single crutch and hugged and kissed them both on the cheek for their efforts in saving her. Aurix thought Shlee blushed more at Petra’s attention than Aurix did at Dera’s kiss, and her whisper of “my hero” in his ear.

Jizizoo had already begun composing a ballad about the rescue and he sang a few bars to cheers and spilled ale to wrap up the formal festivities, though the party would carry on for many more arcs.

Shlee and Aurix retired early, with plans to leave in the morning after they restocked their supplies. Shlee weaved a bit on their way to his room at the inn, plied with a bit more ale than usual. His cheeks were red, and he wore a broad smile that Aurix had rarely seen.

“You’re in a fine mood.”

“Well, sure. Saved ’at pretty girl, we did.” He stuck a bony finger in Aurix’s rib. “You did.”

“You’re just glad that Petra noticed your old rump.”

“Nah. ’M happy she’s happy, though. Jizizoo’s good for ’er. Was nice to see. And we did some good, din’t we?”

“Yes, Shlee, I think we did.”

“No swords tonight. Too tired and me head aches. Not that I wouldn’t still beat you, mind.”

Aurix laughed. “Okay, take the night off, old man.”