Starborn

by Katie MacAlister

  “Bah,” Jalas said, waving away the idea. “That was nothing but sweet words to lull me into complacence.”

  “On the contrary, he did everything he could to prove to you just how much he valued the Tribe’s membership in the Council of Four Armies,” she pointed out, sighing mentally. She grew tired of always being the reasonable one. Just once she wanted to be as irrational and unreasonable as her father. She wanted to make dramatic statements, and storm around the keep making scenes and scattering servants and courtiers before her. She wanted, just once, for someone to realize that she was a volatile, dangerous person.

  Just as Deo did. He alone knew the emotions that ran so hot under her cool exterior…and the passions that bound them both with sharp-edged ties.

  “Name one thing he did that was not for his own purposes,” Jalas demanded, waving his hand in a dramatic gesture, his voice ringing so that it would reach the maximum number of people clustered around them. “Name just one thing that was not simply a stratagem, intended to bring me and my Tribe to heel!”

  “He wed me,” she answered simply.

  Jalas’s jaw worked.

  “When you told him that you would not lend your aid to ridding the world of the Harborym unless we were bound by ties of marriage, he wed me. Against both our desires, I will add. He did that solely to show you how much he honored and respected your wishes.”

  Deo’s priestling gave a sharp intake of breath, sliding Idril an odd questioning look that she had no time to consider. She was aware of the spurt of jealousy that was always present whenever she met Allegria, but as with other emotions, she pushed it down, stifling it even as a little resentment bubbled out at the unfairness of life. That the priest could live her life the way she wanted, fighting at Deo’s side, earning his admiration and affection while she, Idril, was bound to a life of bone-deep boredom and frustration…it was almost too much to bear, but Idril had long ago learned that emotional scenes were allowed only to her father.

  “That was trickery,” Jalas finally ground out, making a sharp gesture when Idril would have answered him. He turned to Hallow, his eyebrows bristling with anger. “For what purpose have you come to the High Lands if not to heed the command of your overlord?”

  “I have no such lord,” Hallow said calmly. “Although I have come to speak to you about Lord Israel’s imprisonment, along with the whereabouts of the moonstone that Exodius left in your care.”

  Jalas’s intake of breath was almost a hiss. “You speak of that which you do not know,” he all but snarled. “As for your overlord—and as a member of that blasted council, you are beholden to him—I have nothing to say. He was found guilty of attempting to kill me and has been tried and sentenced to imprisonment. If that is all you wish, you may leave, and take the she-witch with you. I will have no more of her attempting to rid Alba of my presence.”

  “My lord Jalas, you misinterpret our intentions,” Hallow said, spreading his hands in a gesture of innocence.

  Idril had a flash of fore-knowledge at that moment, an insight that she had inherited from her mother. It was as if the events of the next few minutes were compressed, playing in her mind at a rapid speed. She saw Hallow trying to explain their presence, trying to reason with Jalas, and her father getting angrier and angrier until they were all thrown into the lowest level of the keep with Israel and his men. She knew with every iota of her being that unless she acted, the future that sped past her mind’s eye would be cast in stone as solid as the one in her hand.

  “And I do not wish to spend the rest of my days with Lord Israel in a cell,” she said, brushing past Hallow and Allegria to approach her father. “I simply do not have the time, not with Deo in need of me.”

  Her father was in mid-rant, pausing to look at her in surprise when she stopped next to him, giving him a regretful, gentle smile before she brought down her rock-bearing hand directly on the side of his neck, where it was easiest to knock a man insensible.

  Jalas dropped with a soft thump that was the only sound for a few seconds while their company—and Jalas’s servants, a group of four men clustered together at the door of the hall, stared with disbelieving eyes at the prone figure at her feet.

  “Well done, Lady Idril,” Captain Quinn said, giving her a heated look that would have—if her heart did not already belong to Deo—given her much pleasure. As it was, his admiration pleased her, but only so far as it meant he would be more amenable to her plans. “I couldn’t have done any better. Well, I could have taken off his head, but that’s a far more permanent solution than simply knocking him out.”

  “How—” Allegria stared first at Jalas, then at Idril. “How did she do that?”

  Idril smiled and showed her the rock. “My mother taught me about a spot just behind and below the ear where a very small blow can disable even the most enraged man.”

  “Your mother?” Allegria looked even more astonished, if that was possible. “Was she a warrior like Queen Dasa?”

  “Blessed Kiriah, no,” Idril said, knowing her mother would be scandalized at the very idea. “She was the most gentle of women, known far across Poronne for her skill with herbs, and her abilities to heal.”

  “But she taught you how to—” Allegria mimicked bashing a man on the side of the head with a rock.

  “Of course.” Idril opened her eyes wide. “Didn’t your mother do the same?”

  “Er…no.”

  “That’s a pity. My mother said all maidens should know of such things, as they could be most beneficial.” Idril tucked away her rock, giving it a fond pat as she did so. She would save this rock. It was effective, yet fit so well in her hand.

  “Yes, but…you’re so…you,” Allegria protested, making a vague gesture. “You’re so delicate and frail and ladylike.”

  “I am neither delicate nor frail, and you are not the only one who can take care of problem people, priest.” Idril raised an eyebrow at the arcanist, who was looking amused. “Do you wish to free Lord Israel, or shall I?”

  He was a smart man, she would give him that. He didn’t ask her what she meant; he simply turned his head to look at the wooden bird that sat atop his staff. “Thorn, would you check the route to locate Lord Jalas’s pet bear? No, it doesn’t want to eat you. Bears in general don’t care for animated wood. You are special and very valuable, but that doesn’t alter the fact that no bear in its right mind would want to…well, that is a point, but we’re going to have to assume the bear is sane. Just go, please, to make sure that it’s safe for Lady Idril to release Israel and his company.”

  “What are we going to do with him?” Allegria asked, nodding toward Jalas.

  “Mlarg,” Jalas said, as if in answer to her question, and pushed himself up slightly from where he was face down in the mud. “Frang?”

  Idril sighed and tossed the rock away. Evidently it wasn’t as perfect as she’d first thought. “I suppose now he will claim I tried to kill him, when I only wanted him insensible for a bit.” She turned to the servants, who now looked profoundly worried. “If you tell Jalas what happened, I will remove several of your respective body parts in an extremely unpleasant and very bloody manner.”

  Allegria gave a snort of laughter. “I’m sorry, I know you just said you’re not frail or delicate, but if you need us to threaten your servants so that they listen to you, we will be happy to do so.”

  Idril gave Allegria a long look. “Do you think my servants do not heed my commands?”

  “I’m sure they do, but you have to admit that you’re not very…” She stopped, clearly trying to find words that weren’t offensive. “You’re not known for your fighting prowess. Hallow and I are, though, and we’d be happy to help you keep your people in line.”

  “There is no need for that.” Idril pulled out the dagger that hung from her crystal and gold linked girdle, dusting off the jeweled hilt before restoring it to its sheath. “They kno
w what I can do when I put my mind to it.”

  The servants, to a man, blanched. One looked like he might vomit.

  Jalas, with a grunt, managed to roll onto his side, and was ineffectively trying to wipe mud from his face.

  “Perhaps it would be best if I…” Hallow took Jalas by one arm, gesturing to Quinn to take the other.

  “Lady Idril?” the captain asked her, his eyes filled with a besotted look of boundless admiration that both pleased and annoyed her.

  “I suppose you’d better,” she said, nodding.

  Quinn and Hallow got her father to his feet, although he weaved and his legs buckled underneath him when they more or less hauled him up the stairs into the hall.

  “I’m going to want you to show me the spot beneath the ear where you hit him,” Allegria murmured when she followed Idril inside.

  “I will show you if you promise to stop growling at me,” Idril answered in just as soft a tone. “It makes me feel as if you are a dog worried that I will steal your supper.”

  Allegria’s eyes widened, but Idril had more important things to worry about. By the time Jalas had been placed in the massive, heavily carved oak chair that was his version of a throne, he had started to sputter indignantly, demanding to know what had happened.

  “Er…” Hallow glanced at Idril.

  With yet another sigh to herself, she moved forward, taking a bit of cloth wrapped around the waist of one of the servants, and using it to wipe the worst of the mud from Jalas. “You had an attack, Father, and fell insensible for a few seconds. Have you had too much ale today?”

  “An attack?” he asked groggily, wincing when he turned to look at Idril. “Ale?”

  “He’s still a bit rattled from the attack,” she announced to the servants with meaningful glances. They all glanced at the dagger, turned even paler than before, and nodded eagerly. “Perhaps he should be put to bed. Would you like that, Father?”

  “Hrn?” he asked, passing a hand over his eyes. “Head hurts.”

  “I’m sure it does,” Idril said soothingly, gesturing at the servants, who hurried forward to more or less lift Jalas. “An overindulgence in ale always gives you pain in the head. Sleep will make you feel better, and when you wake, you will take a posset I will make with your favorite wine.”

  “Posset,” he repeated as the servants bodily hoisted him and carried him toward the stairs. “Wine.”

  “We have about an hour,” Idril said, turning to Hallow. “Less if he becomes angry about something. There’s nothing that sharpens his mind like one of his rages. I will go down to see about Lord Israel if you will search for the moonstone.”

  Hallow nodded his agreement.

  “I will assist Lady Idril as is right and proper and wholly wonderful,” Quinn announced, bowing low to her.

  “There’s a possibly mad bear down there who may or may not have highly inappropriate thoughts about men,” Allegria told him.

  “On the other hand, perhaps I should see to securing the gates, lest any of Lord Jalas’s men arrive unexpectedly,” he said, doing an about-face and calling over his shoulder as he marched out the door, “Dex will go with you, Lady Idril. She’s worth a dozen men, especially when she’s hungry.”

  The odd, small girl with the disturbingly pointed teeth smacked her lips. “I haven’t had a good meal of souls in ever so long.”

  Idril pursed her lips, thought of sending the worrisome child on her way, but decided, upon a moment’s reflection, that if her father’s men were foolish enough to object to her freeing Lord Israel, then they deserved to have their souls snacked on.

  “Come, my heart,” Hallow said to Allegria, holding out a hand for her. “Between your communing with Kiriah and a spell I’ve been working on, we should be able to find where Lord Jalas has secreted the stone.”

  Allegria didn’t look convinced. “She’s already mostly shunning me, Hallow. I’m not sure that Kiriah will agree this is worthy of her time, but I will try.”

  He lifted her hand to his lips. Idril felt a little bubble of sadness well inside her. Deo had once looked at her the way Hallow was looking at his priestess. It had been far too long since those days…

  “Thorn will return as soon as he makes sure the passage is clear for Idril, and there isn’t much we can’t do when the three of us are together,” Hallow said.

  “You’re better with Deo at your side,” Idril pointed out, and lifting the hem of her gown so it wouldn’t get filthy, headed for the narrow door that led to narrower stairs down into the bowels of the keep. If Boris, her father’s bear, was indeed patrolling the dungeon, then she’d simply have him removed before convincing the guards that they had best heed her desires.

  She would not tolerate being crossed. Not again.

  Chapter 9

  I could tell Hallow was beyond frustrated. He spun around the room into which we’d trekked—one of at least a dozen through which he’d led us—but it contained nothing but the usual bedchamber accoutrements. Not even the great wooden chest that lurked in a corner held anything but a family of startled mice.

  “I don’t know what’s gone wrong with this spell,” Hallow said, rubbing his chin in the abstracted way he had whenever his magic didn’t go quite right. “I did exactly as was written on the script that Exodius hid behind the panel in the garderobe.”

  “I want badly to comment about the feasibility of any spell you find hidden in a toilet,” I said gently, “But since I know you’re distracted and out of sorts because we’ve been searching for almost an hour now, and haven’t found the stone, I won’t.”

  “You are a wise woman,” he said, flashing a grin at me before squaring his shoulders, preparing to speak the words and draw the runes that comprised the spell of finding. “Right. Thorn, this time, I want you back on the staff. Maybe having you there will focus the arcany, and that will bring forward the stone’s hiding place, and we can—”

  A muffled sound arrested him. We looked at each other for a few seconds as the low notes of a battle horn faded away to nothing; then we were both running, racing down two flights of stairs until we emerged in the great hall. There was no one visible, but we didn’t wait to see what was happening—we continued down a narrow, steep stone staircase into the depths of the keep. Long before we reached the lower level, we heard the sounds of battle.

  A man screamed an oath, the sound quickly turning into a raspy burble that disappeared altogether. An ironbound door ahead of us was shut and locked, but Hallow took almost no time in working magic that opened it for us.

  A mad cacophony of noise swirled around us when we ran down the central aisle of the lowest level of the keep. Doors leading to numerous storage rooms stretched out before us, rooms that were now being used as cells, all but two of them closed and locked, but it was the battle in front of us that had me mentally reaching for Kiriah, pulling hard on the heat of her sun at the same time Hallow’s fingers began dancing as he drew spells on the air.

  Once again, only a warm glow lit my hands. I pushed down the despair that Kiriah no longer found me worthy of her trust, and pulled out my swords, tackling the nearest clutch of attackers.

  “This must be—Hallow, to your right!—an entire unit down here. Ack! Kiriah’s blisters, you will pay for that!” I stumbled forward at the blow to my back, twisting when I fell so that I could slash at my attacker. The man was huge, almost as broad as he was tall, clad in skins and leather, and with a beard that reached halfway down his chest. He held a massive axe, which he’d raised in preparation of cleaving me in two, but even as I severed several tendons in one of his giant arms, Hallow had disabled the two men attacking him from the sides, and leaped forward with both hands held palm forward. A loud percussive blast echoed as my attacker was sent flying backward, crashing into a wall with the sound of breaking bones.

  “Allegria?” Hallow asked, spinning to slash at an attack
er’s legs with the staff. Thorn, who had taken off the second we entered the area, flashed in and out of the melee of fighting bodies, spinning his own spells, and pecking at faces when he had the chance.

  “I’m fine, just watch your right side. Idril! Do you need help?”

  “With these men? Of course not,” she answered, her white blond hair shimmering when she ducked before stabbing upward, sending an attacker staggering backward with a wet gurgle.

  I’d had a few surprises come my way that day regarding Idril, but none more startling than the sight of her gauzy apricot and gold gown fluttering, her lithe and graceful form losing none of its charm while she slashed and stabbed. She held two daggers, both slightly curved, and both covered in blood that sprayed out as she dealt with one attacker and moved on to the next. Behind her, with his back to hers, Lord Israel fought another axe-wielding attacker. Beyond them, Quinn used a cutlass against a couple of smaller men, while Dexia leaped on the back of a third and pounded his head into the stone wall, biting off his ear in the process.

  Just as I was helping Hallow deal with a group of four men, shouts could be heard from an influx of soldiers at the far end of the vast room, past where Quinn and Dexia fought.

  “Hallow, there’s another entrance,” I panted, nodding toward the men who swarmed in on a wave of axes, swords, and pikes. Even as I watched, one of the newly arrived soldiers skewered Quinn on the pike, pinning him to a wooden door. “Kiriah’s blood, no!” I yelled, and desperately fought my way forward, taking off legs and arms as I went, not waiting to finish off the attackers in my need to help Quinn. Hallow roared an oath, and above my head Thorn flew on a massive blast of arcane magic, knocking back the men who were still pouring in through the other door.