Novel snippet - Ashfall

Ash tripped over himself in his haste, spilling onto his hands and knees, embedding gravel in his palms. "Blood of the Old Lords!" he cursed, leapt up, and continued pounding his way amongst the tents to Selendria's.  She had not requested an ornate silken tent, bright of color and hung with long banners to flicker in the wind, but the same drab canvas that every other soldier had. Ash admired that. She remained the same that she had been at Thebane Sanctuary Prime, though more troubled now.  She had to be distinguishable to messengers, however, so the only concession to ornament she allowed was a bright blue je'ton embroidered over her tent door.  It was toward that weapon of thread that Ash now ran.  "Selendria! It's Ash! Come out!" he shouted as he ran, voice cracking. There was no movement as he neared, and he dashed inside. Empty. He spun on his heel, pushing back out the canvas door. Where was she? The Council!  He darted away, wary of the treacherous tentlines, ignoring the pain in his ragged palms. 

*  *  *

Bromgar leaned forward intently, gesticulating with his leg of roast fowl that dripped grease and gravy down his fingers.  The warriors from the Narrows of Hevon were skilled hunters and brought in game for the soldiers that had no time or strength to hunt.  Bromgar's voice boomed out. "Now is the time to strike! They avoid the light, we know, though for what reason is still uncertain. Selendria keeps them off with her sphere of light and they never attack those carrying torches. Only thing that kept her father alive when they attacked him!"

"Yes," Selendria interjected, "kept him alive then, though he's dying now, regardless. Like the other sick we tend, like Zebulon Poi, your own friend, Bromgar."

Bromgar nodded to her and continued, "All the more reason! The only advantage we hope to claim is to attack while they are holed up like rabbits in their burrows! Waiting avails us nothing! We invite them to attack if we never press the offensive!" He slammed his fist onto his thigh, splattering gravy droplets over his trousers.

Another voice argued "What if they gather their strength while beneath ground? We may have no chance to defeat them if they are thus fortified. Action without knowledge is folly!" The heavy-jowled man shook a fist in the air. A mystic from some Thebane Sanctuary by the look of his robes.

"We should build fires on their burrows, set the whole lot aflame and cook 'em!" another voice urged.

"Aye, an' where are ye to get enough wood ta burn 'em on the Plains? We're already down to burnin' empty barrels and dung!"

"And who's to say they can't burrow their way clear - are we to set the Plains themselves aflame?"

"Yes, if needs be!"

"By the gods, no!"

"Gentlemen!" Selendria's voice cut through. "We gain nothing by fruitlessly contesting what is already trodden ground. Now shall we..."

Ash burst through the flaps and breathlessly skidded to a stop inside the tent, "Forgive the interruption," he panted, "but your mother...foster mother sent me. It's about... the dragon."  The heavy-jowled Mystic leapt to his feet, the voices of her council sparked to life like fire in prairie grass.

"QUIET!" belted Bromgar, "Let the boy speak!"

Ash felt everyone's eyes on him, and he scuffed his boot as he continued.  "It's likely the same dragon as was on the battlefield the night Treyvan was killed...uh...lost."

Selendria's eyes narrowed. She had been increasingly short on patience since Treyvan's disappearance. She would not allow anyone to speak of him as though dead. Anger flared in her.

"Have you gone mad? What infernal dragon? I never saw any dragons. My foster mother must be deluded with grief over her husband to concoct such nonsense. Daemon are one thing, dragons entirely another!"

Ash had never seen her angry, and his eyes were large as he  struggled to find his voice in the sudden silence that surrounded them.

"Begging pardon, but I saw the dragon too! Or I'm a swordswallower!"

Selendria looked at him, and he swallowed hard, as if to prove it. She threw up her hands in exasperation, pulling her cloak off the rock she had been seated on.

"Bromgar!" she wheeled on him. "Have you seen any dragons?"

Bromgar nonchalantly stuffed his mouth full of roast fowl, licking the juice off his fingers. He squinted into the sky.  "Never this far south...."

A derisive laugh was quickly stifled as the man realized that Bromgar the Northerner was not joking.

The Northerners had elaborately decorated houses with the faces of the beasts of legends carved and painted upon them.  Fearsome snarling dragons, the heads of the great basilisks who would turn one who gazed upon them to stone, the many faces of the undersea Watcher, for whom Watcher's Reach had been named, and other frightening creatures out of the old tales stood sentry around their homes.  They were to frighten away the monsters who would threaten their villages as legend told that evil could not bear its own reflection.

Bromgar was the soul of seriousness. "It's either on the hunt or looking to mate - no dens out this far for it to hole up in. Mountain dwellers, dragons are, or cliffs for the seadragons. Ain't no Plains dragons - no place to hoard their treasure." He tossed his leg bone into the dung fire, the fire hissing and sizzling the fat off the bone. Bromgar looked up at her.

For a moment, she held his gaze, looking at back at him, and her voice had lost its anger when she spoke, never breaking the gaze with Bromgar's eyes. "Ash, take me to Teriah."

*  *  *

The maze of tents, set up haphazardly and as quickly as possible once daybreak lightened the horizon, had no discernible order.  Selendria had become lost in their daily shifting and changing as they tore down camp, marched, fought, set up, ate, slept... The entire routine had become as blurred as her own chaos of thought of late. She had not slept well, even before Treyvan's...disappearance, though it was worse now.

She could not rest in the daylight, try though she might and as tired as she was.  The mulled wine, warm milk, counting backward from a thousands thousand, none had brought relief.  And when she had finally slept, carried off despite the protest of her mind by the total exhaustion of her body, then she had dreamed of darkness, of terror, of gleaming teeth and red eyes.  Her dream before the Council had convened this day had been the worst of them yet...

She had dreamed she walked in snowy woods with thin trees huddled together, tall grey fingers reaching impossibly high into the clouded sky. She was alone, and cold, and walked endlessly through woods that would not end.  She heard the screaming, ran to the sound, though it echoed all around her and she could not find the way.  She ran and ran and came into a clearing and saw them, their black bodies huddled over him, their maws bright with his blood. The daemon turned to her, hissing, and she thought him dead. His lower half was gone, his entrails spilling onto the snow, the white of his ribs against the cavernous redness inside. Surely dead, she had thought, until he opened his lips and his eyes, staring through her, glazed, unfocused, and whispered "Help me..."

Selendria had awoken in a sweat, the canvas sweltering and stuffy. She shuddered off the horror of her dream.  At least having his body would bring comfort, to know that he was truly dead.

Lost in thoughts dark and gruesome, Ash led her easily through the canvas labyrinth until she reached her foster mother's tent. "Mother!" she called, and Teriah emerged to enfold Selendria in the warmth of her fur-trimmed robe's embrace.