Ella realized she was speaking to hide her terror. The closest ship was still out in deep water, but Ella could now see a golden pennant flown next to a white flag that snapped in the wind. She saw a black design on the white flag that could have been a withered tree. It was the symbol of the Akari, but they’d inherited it in turn from the Lord of the Night.
Ella tore her gaze from the warship and then gasped.
A single, solitary figure stood at the water’s edge.
Ella could swear he hadn’t been there before. The man stood as if waiting and wore a sky-blue robe, belted at the waist with a golden cord.
Ella recognized the white hair and slightly stooped shoulders that were now, somehow, regal.
Evrin Evenstar stood alone to greet the enemy.
The advancing ships held off in the deep water, still several hundred paces from shore. It was as if time had stopped.
Ella held her breath.
Evrin’s hands began to move.
Sparkles of light colored the air in front of him, twisting rainbows curling in among each other and threading together to form a startling platform. Evrin’s hands shifted in the air; Ella guessed he must be holding a scrill, but if so, she couldn’t see it. The trails of golden light whirled together, and Evrin took a step up. His hands moved faster now, faster than Ella thought possible, and Evrin took a second step forward, and then a third.
Evrin’s voice couldn’t be heard, as far away as Ella was, but she knew he must be chanting, calling on each rune as he trailed essence into the very air, connecting the new to the old.
Evrin built a glowing stairway, taking one step after another as he ascended. His creation took him past the shallows, then further still, to where the dark water met the light, and still he kept moving. He now stood high above the deep sea, and still he kept building, higher and higher, further out into the sea, as if trying to connect the white sand of the beach to the line of enemy vessels.
Evrin’s stairway continued past the dark water and farther, to where the deep blue turned to black. He was now at an incredible height, and he stopped, looking down at the ships below while the whole world waited.
Ella tried to stand, but Layla clutched her arm, pulling her back down. “He has a plan,” Layla said. “You are not part of it.”
Evrin raised his arms to the sky as the watchers on the ridge looked on with mouths gaping wide.
Evrin called in a voice like a howl, and the thunder of his speech was easily audible to all below. It was a mighty, primal sound, a cry of rage, a bellow of pain, a summons.
“Sentar!” Evrin roared.
Ella clenched her fists, her knuckles white, as she caught movement from the ship with the golden pennant.
Ella watched as a figure in black rose into the air.
She’d heard so much about him, but it was the first time Ella had seen Sentar Scythran, the Lord of the Night, in the flesh.
Ella’s gaze took in a man with red hair like Killian’s, though Sentar’s shade was deeper, the color of blood. The two men were too far away for Ella to see much more.
But as she watched Sentar floating easily in front of Evrin Evenstar, the difference in their abilities was driven home with sudden force.
Ella felt something terrible was about to happen.
Evrin gazed at the face in front of him. How long had it been since he’d last seen this face? How many centuries had passed since he’d banished Sentar Scythran, Varian Vitrix, Pyrax Pohlen, and the rest of his brothers to the world they’d opened up with blood?
As high as he was, wind buffeted him, curling his robe around his body. Evrin stood with his legs spread and resisted the urge to look down into the deep water. In his right hand he held a golden scrill, a metal rod as long as his hand. His left hand was empty.
“Lord of the Sky,” Sentar said, his lip curled in a sneer. “Human lover.”
“Sentar, you killed the woman I loved, and you took away what I was. Still, we are brothers. End this madness. Learn to live with the humans.”
“Live with the humans?” Sentar said. He tilted his head back as he laughed. “We’re gods, Evrin Evenstar! We’re as far beyond them as stars from insects. They swarm, they irritate, but we shine. We burn with power. Can you not feel the power, surging within you, filling your limbs with vigor? Oh,” Sentar smiled, “I’m sorry, I just remembered. You cannot.”
“They are too powerful for you now,” Evrin said. “They’ve outgrown us.”
Sentar looked back over his shoulder, down at the multitude of ships below. “The living will never defeat the dead. Every human I destroy feeds my war machine. Once I gain a foothold on this Empire, they will never turn me back. It will only end when I have resumed my rightful place. For humans, there is only death.”
“A plague,” Evrin said. “You and yours are a plague and nothing more. I should have killed you when I had the chance.”
“Finally getting some courage, Lord of the Sky?”
“I sent you and the others to exile out of compassion, not out of any lack of courage on my part.”
“You sent us to a nightmare world, to a fate worse than death.”
“It was a world you found for yourselves. You deserved your fate.”