AllFreeNovel
Share Us
The girl-eagle sighed. “Here I was thinking that, just once, it would be nice if you fought a battle yourself, without getting others to do your dirty work.” She was thinking hard. She would have to be fast now, faster than she’d ever been in her life.
“I am not the one who gets my little animal friends killed by the hundreds for defending me,” he taunted her.
Any anger that had clouded her mind vanished. “I made my peace with that—and with them—three years ago. Fight, damn you!”
“I won’t soil my claws.” He sneered. “I was the Emperor Mage of Carthak—”
“Oh, please,” she retorted, glancing back. The other immortals were coming on fast. “That’s finished, and by your own acts did you finish it!”
“How dare you judge me?” he snarled. “You’re a common-born bastard, a camp follower’s brat who spreads her legs for any passing man—just like her mother.”
To her own surprise—and quite clearly, to his—Daine laughed. “And you’re as ignorant as you are evil,” she retorted. “I’m done listening to you!”
Wheeling to face the immortals behind her, she changed, as quickly as thought. A giant strangling-snake, she dropped across two apes who flew close together, wrapping her tail around one throat, and her first three feet of length around the other. To her surprise, two small, blobby forms dropped past. Spreading themselves like kites, they steered until they fell onto the faces of both Stormwings. Leaf and Jelly had stolen a ride on Daine’s back.
The Stormwings tried to scream; instead they only pulled darking bodies into their throats. Daine couldn’t wait or watch. In one burst of strength, she squeezed, and heard dull snaps as both of her victims’ necks broke.
Agony burned her side: The third winged ape wielded a sword. Daine fell away, forcing herself into raven form as she dropped. The cut was long, but shallow; with a grimace she made herself ignore the pain. If she didn’t bleed too much, she would be fine. She would have to be fine.
Plummeting, she remembered the feel of wind under feathers and the loud calls of raven flock-mates. The wind caught her outspread wings and carried her aloft.
There was a crash: The smothered Stormwings dropped into the woods. Leaf and Jelly fell away from their victims, gliding flat until they latched onto the naked limbs of a tall, long-dead tree. Daine swooped to get them, as Ozorne screamed a word.
The two darkings flared crimson, and exploded. Pulling her wings in, stretching her body, she banked, murder in her heart. The last winged ape was forgotten. There was no one bird that she drew on, but many, as Daine shaped angled wings to give her speed, a ripping beak and talons to match for combat, a starling’s talent for quick, midair dodges. She stayed as large as she dared: She would need size to fight this battle. Hurtling through the winds, she came at Ozorne.
He lashed her with Stormwing fire. She barrel-rolled, spinning away from his bolts without losing a feather’s worth of speed. Behind her, something grunted: The sword-wielding ape fought to catch up. She would have to deal with him: He was quicker than he had a right to be. Twisting herself until the air flowed over and under her just right, she emptied her large bird’s bowels squarely into his face.
The ape’s furious howl was choked and wet. Daine chanced a look back. He clawed at his throat, his sword falling to the earth. The silly clunch inhaled, she thought coldly, before she fixed her attention on Ozorne once more.
He burned her twice with crimson bolts, or tried to. She bent away from both and picked up her speed. He was sweating; she could smell it, a bitter combination of man oils and metal tang that spread through the air.
On the ground, the forest came to an end; they had reached the coast, far beyond the point where Yamani ships had landed the Tortallan force. Below, the sea battered the feet of high, rocky cliffs. The cliff thermals would help her along; she was beginning to tire, a little.
But if Daine was tiring, so was Ozorne. It cost him to fly. She could see it in his laboring wings and loss of speed. Twice he spun to throw flame at her. Ducking it easily, she gained altitude and circled to his left. He knew she was not directly behind him, an easy target. Forced to keep turning in order to see her, Ozorne lost momentum. Daine closed the gap. Once she was close enough, she changed again, and dropped onto his back, her wild-cat’s forepaws hooked over his shoulders.
Razor-edged feathers cut into her fur; she clamped her jaws on the back of his neck and bit, hard. Ozorne howled and writhed, falling. Daine bit harder. There was naked flesh on his back, too, where she put her rear claws to use. Red fire raced all over his skin, burning her paws and mouth. She hung on as long as she could, but in the end, she lost control over her shape and dropped off, while Ozorne spun and fell, bleeding heavily.
She strained, trying to regain her wings, but her mind was as exhausted as her body. She couldn’t remember how winged creatures felt to her. I can’t die! she thought frantically. Not whilst he’s alive!
Her back struck a soft, feathered platform that slowed her fall. Gulls had come to her rescue, crowding together so that their outstretched wings overlapped, forming a platform of feather, skin, and bone. They sank to the ground, and drew away from her. She dropped an inch or two, striking thick, springy grass.
“Thank you,” she whispered, rolling to her knees. “If I survive this, I will owe you and your kinfolk until the end of time.”
She looked up. Ozorne’s fall, like her long tumble in the Divine Realms, had been slowed and broken by a tree. He neared the ground, using his magic to cushion his own drop. When he landed, he was scant yards away. For a moment he stood, gasping, sweat-drenched hair in his eyes, bleeding from deep gouges and scrapes.
Daine forced herself to change, dredging up one last droplet of magic to arm herself. Her skin rippled, grew fur, developed patterns, changed again to human skin. “Like a Chaos thing myself,” she mumbled, getting to her knees, and shuddered.
Ozorne shook his hair out of his eyes and grinned, lips peeling mirthlessly from his steel teeth. “What is Chaos to you?” he sneered, panting as he walked toward her.
“If you’re for it, then I’m against it,” she retorted, keeping her own face down.
“Then you’re in trouble,” he informed her. “With my help, Uusoae has the strength to defeat the gods at last. She has promised that I will be king of the world.”
“And how long will that last? She’ll only eat the world, too, when she’s done with the gods.” Daine thought she had something—her fingers and toenails were cooperating, at least. Driving up from the ground—she had to strike before he got those wing blades of his up—she launched herself at him with a scream of raw fury, finger-claws raking at his eyes, knees drawn up to her chest so that the claws on her feet could dig into his gut.
She knocked him back. Intertwined, they rolled down a slope, the girl ripping all the meat from him that her talons could reach, keeping her head down so that he couldn’t fasten his metal teeth in her throat. He clawed at her with his own feet, tried to cut her with his wings, but it was hard for him to bend his metal flesh, harder still to grip a head cushioned by thick, long curls in his jaws. He screamed something.
A force lifted her up and knocked her yards away. She landed on her back, the wind knocked from her lungs. Trying to fill them again, Daine felt her claws turn back into toes and fingernails. As surely as she knew her name, she was certain that there were no more shape changes left in her. Perhaps if she had not lost so much blood, or flown so hard and so fast, or had kept her shapes to those of whole animals instead of using parts from many . . .
The sound of metal scraping rock woke her from a weary half-trance. She gasped, and coughed, found the air to roll over, and got on her hands and knees. He was coming for her, panting and exhausted himself, bleeding and triumphant.
“So here you are, without your precious friends,” he mocked. “There is no one to save you: no human, no animal—no magic. Don’t try to deny it,” he said when she looked up at him. “Stormwing magic
isn’t good for much, but we can tell when someone is ready to die—when all her weapons are stripped from her.”
Daine hung her head. At the edge of her vision the badger’s heavy silver claw—the one thing that managed to stay with her through every shape change that she had ever worked—swung on its chain. The end of the claw was sharp; she knew that very well.
She let her curls fall forward, masking her actions. He was still a few yards away. With her right hand, she felt the chain until she found the catch. With her left, she groped for a rock. He would see that; let him.
A flick of a fingernail opened the catch. The chain ran off her neck and through the wire binding of the claw, pooling on the ground like water, Daine straightened, claw tucked into her right hand, a rock visible in her left. She hurled the stone at Ozorne. The weakness in her arm was terrifying; still, her aim at least was good. He threw up a magical shield, but it was barely visible. When the rock struck, the shield’s pale red fires rippled and broke; the stone thumped his chest.
“I’m not the only one that’s out of magic,” she cried hoarsely. Manipulating the claw, she positioned it so that it thrust between the fingers of her fist, pointing out and down. “You couldn’t light a candle, could you?”
He smiled, lifting a razor-edged wing as he approached. “I don’t need magic to handle you now, Veralidaine. All I need is this. Why don’t you just bare your throat, and make it easy on yourself?”
Come on, she thought, watching through her curtain of hair. And I have to make sure he never gets up from this. Just one . . . more . . . step . . .
He took it, bringing him within wing reach—or arm’s reach. She threw herself forward, with no grace or coordination of muscle. Grabbing the upper edge of his open wing with one hand, feeling its bite in her palm, Daine slashed forward with the claw.
Ozorne screamed a doomed beast’s scream as the badger’s talon bit into his neck, and tore. Daine yanked the claw sideways, across his windpipe, through the veins on the opposite side. His blood sprayed, drenching them both; he thrashed like a mad thing. She dug the claw into his belly and dragged it down.
At last he was still.
