One Man by Harry Connolly

Author:Harry Connolly [Connolly, Harry]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781951617011
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

The year 395 of the New Calendar, eight years earlier.

* * *

The sun was setting in the west behind them, but the column of pale light blasting toward the clouds cast new, eerie shadows in the jungle foliage.

The glitterkind were still crying out their chorus of misery and distress. Though they spoke no words, Kyrionik thought they were sounding an alarm. He could feel their panic.

“I’m sorry,” he called to no one in particular. He wished he could undo the last six months. Sail to Harka as he’d promised, fight raiders from horseback, oversee the construction of a tower, and secure the peninsula.

But nothing could be taken back. Real mistakes could never be undone.

Aratill rushed toward him. “Your virtue! We—”

Kyrionik leaped up the stairs. Aratill was strong and steadfast, but he was not as quick as an athletic teenager determined to see the danger he had made.

Racing up the slope, Kyrionik grasped at tree roots and half-buried broken stones. Aratill had trained him to never use his weapon as a walking stick, but he did so now, jamming the butt of his spear into the dirt to propel himself upward.

He came to a bulge in the slope and saw Shulipik tuto-Beskeroth once again standing at the top of the stair, once again staring at something ahead. But this time, his ghostkind glaive was in his right hand, and his helm in the other. The force of the great gleaming torrent of light erupting from the ground made his braided hair fly out behind him.

Kyrionik came up beside him, breathing hard. The depression where the glitterkind lay was awash in a terrible white light. The column played on the glitterkind skin in a way that Kyrionik had never seen before, like brightly burning stars of every color. Rainbow beams shone onto the greenery around them.

It was beautiful.

Catching his breath, Kyrionik asked, “Your virtue, what happened?”

Shulipik turned toward him with an expression the younger man could not read. He seemed at once mournful, ecstatic, and transfixed, as though they were watching the end of a tragic play. He almost looked drunk with emotion. “Selso Rii happened, your virtue.” Shulipik glanced behind him. Kyrionik saw the man’s headless corpse in the green. “I lost track of him, and he secretly cut a portion of glitterkind flesh for his own pack. Look.”

He pointed to one of the creatures. Its left hand had been severed below the elbow.

“Too greedy,” Kyrionik said. This was why glitterkind magic was dangerous. Greed urged them to cut too deep, and…

And what? Would this column of light sound a warning? Summon help? Kyrionik wished he’d found someone to explain the real danger to him.

“There it is.” Shulipik put on his helm and buckled it. He peered into the center of the geyser of light and readied his glaive. “An ullroct.”

Aratill caught up to them. His helm was off and his bald head was bright red and streaked with sweat. Kyrionik felt a twinge of guilt at the effort he’d put the older man through.

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