by Ellyn, Court
Carah clamped her eyes shut and waited for the blow that would add her blood to the rest.
A hand seized her by the wrist, dragged her from under the table. “No!” she shrieked and lashed out, pelting with fists and feet, then heard in her head, Carah, it’s me! Uncle Thorn hauled her toward the dais. His free hand put a bolt through a man’s back, and Kelyn leapt back as the corpse toppled. Thorn grabbed his brother, too, and shouted for Rhian. “Cover me!”
Glancing back, Carah saw Rhian high on the tables, leaping the gaps between them and tossing spheres of raw energy as he went. Soldiers and highborns were flung apart by the blasts. He took up position before the overturned table, while Thorn shoved his brother and his niece behind it. His staff lay on the floor near Prince Da’yn’s body. Leanian guards and Falcons lay in heaps around him. Thorn swept up the staff and pointed the crystal orb at the wall beneath the royal banners. Sparks crackled around the dragon’s claws and unleashed with a thunder-crack. Stone, mortar, and earth exploded outward. Dust fell in a choking cloud. Gray sky greeted them. Yes, Valryk had built his new wing right up to the inner wall. Merchants’ houses and city streets were a welcome sight. But beyond that, two hundred yards away, loomed the outer curtain. Carah despaired, realizing they were still trapped. How long could they hide in the city before soldiers sniffed them out?
Thorn grabbed her hand, closed his eyes, and breathed. A sizzling white glow enveloped the staff’s head. He stomped a foot. Carah’s legs grew weak as he snatched energy from her veins. A wave surged out from the epicenter of his foot and raced through the breach in the wall. Surging up the street, it rumpled cobbles, ripped walls off houses, tossed carts on the curbs, and finally struck the outer wall like the Goddess’s own hammer. Twenty-foot-thick layers of rubble-packed stone cracked, but held. Thorn sent a second wave, a third, and finally the wall gave way. Open moor lay beyond.
Kelyn had gone back to fighting in the meantime. Drys slashed madly on his left and Lord Rhogan of Mithlan on his right. At the Fieran end of the dais, Lady Drona, her nephew, and a handful of White Mantles stood against a dozen soldiers. Someone had given King Arryk a sword. He jabbed high through the fence of his protectors and put the blade through a man’s eye.
Thorn shoved Carah through the breach and called to his brother, but Kelyn shouted back, “I can’t leave them, damn it.”
Sweating and gray-faced from his efforts, Thorn leveled the staff at the man opposing his brother. A searing blast sent the Falcon hurtling. “Get your daughter out of here!”
Sense broke through the red haze glazing Da’s eyes.
“Head east,” Thorn said. “East, do you hear?”
“Yes.” Da’s hands were sticky with blood, but Carah didn’t mind as he hoisted her over the pile of rubble. They raced along the warped street, between crumbling walls and collapsing roofs. Uncle Thorn’s wave must have overturned lamps inside the houses, for fire blazed in the thatching, curled through windows. The citizens of Bramoran stumbled about the ruins, bleeding, confused, sobbing. Kelyn crashed through a knot of them, and Carah leapt over the crushed body they gathered to inspect.
Behind them, thunder roared. She longed to glance back, see if Uncle Thorn and Rhian followed, but on the battlements of the inner curtain, gruff voices shouted, “Crossbows! … anyone in the street!”
Ahead on the outer curtain, startled sentries rushed to the sight of the explosion. Carah’s breath throbbed, ragged and hot in her throat. The hole in the wall was so close now. The sentries saw them coming and pointed. Was that a crossbow in a man’s hand? The battlements were too high for her to be sure.
A man in the livery of the city watch held up a hand and called, “Stop where you are!” In his other hand he carried a bared short sword. Kelyn barreled into him before he thought to raise the blade in his defense. A stroke from Da’s sword opened the watchman’s chest. Carah never had to break her stride. The sentries ahead shouted at the sight of the dead man falling. Quarrels whistled past. Carah shrieked, threw a hand over her head, as if that were an adequate shield, and fell into the shadow of the broken wall. All the debris here had been thrown down a thirty-foot drop into the moat. Before she could work up the courage to jump, Kelyn grabbed her shoulders and tossed her through the breach. Flailing, she sucked down a gulp of air. The moat rose fast, and the icy water was as startling as a slap. She surfaced, spitting reeking water from her lips, and stroked like mad. She was a poor swimmer, but terror sped her along and soon her hands were clawing up the muddy bank.
A man screamed in pain. Heavy splashes shook the waters. More people were bailing from Bramoran, like rats from a burning ship, but who? She had no chance to look back. A quarrel thunked into the soft earth beside her, and Da hauled her to her feet. “Weave!” he shouted as they ran. Ahead, a stand of andyr trees filled a hollow in the hills. Every couple of steps Carah feinted left or right, left and left again, then to the right. She couldn’t feel her legs anymore, wasn’t sure how they kept running; her lips tingled, and black spots danced before her eyes. If you faint you’re dead, she warned herself.
The trees swept close to embrace her. Leaves slapped at her cheeks, and she used the trunk of an andyr to break her headlong flight. She sagged against it, unable to catch her breath. Pain pricked her thigh. Surely they were out of range of the crossbows here.
Da spun her around, clenched her arms. “Are you hurt?”
She shook her head, fast tiny jerks, then reached for the needle of pain in her leg. A crossbow’s quarrel had punctured her silver robe and hung there limply. The steel point brushed against her skin, scratching it, but drew no blood. Too close. She laughed and sobbed at the same time.
Her da held her tightly, then set her aside and hurried to the edge of the wood. “Look there!” He swept an arm high. “Rorin! Here!” Lord Westport puffed and stumbled, found the source of the voice and ran on. He had lost his frivolous hat.
“They killed my boy,” he panted, falling into Kelyn. “They killed my Barrin.” He sank to the ground and threw up in the weeds.
More ran along behind him, a slow trickle. “Rhogan! Drys!” Kelyn beckoned. Two women ran with them. One was Lord Mithlan’s black-haired granddaughter. Rhogan half-carried her, half-shoved her toward the trees. Blood flowed down her face. The other? Yes, it was Maeret. Carah never thought she’d be happy to see her. Her sodden skirts were no impediment and she soon outpaced Lord Zeldanor and the others.
“What the fuck is happening?” Drys bellowed, drawing up under the branches. Unmentionable filth was plastered in his yellow hair. “Why are we fighting our own?” He balled his fists. “I’ll rip Valryk’s head from his shoulders, I swear to the Mother!”
Rhogan sat his granddaughter down in the clearing, saw to the gash in her scalp. Aisley nodded heavily, bloodlessly, then fell back in the leaves in a dead faint.
“My father’s in the moat,” Maeret cried, pointing and tugging Kelyn’s sleeve. “Please, we have to pull him out. He’ll drown!”
Kelyn stopped her from running back, hauled her into the trees. “Davhin is lost. I saw him hit with a quarrel.”
Was it he who had screamed? Carah watched the breach in the wall, the shivering waters of the moat. More than one body floated face-down. Others lay strewn on the bank. A man with a quarrel in his leg tried to rise, but a second sprouted from his back and he laid still.
The clash of steel rang through the breach. Someone was still trying to fight their way free. “C’mon,” Da breathed, like a prayer. “Jump, damn it.”
Several men in white showed enough sense to do just that. They leapt from the hole as one unit and climbed onto the bank again, spreading their great mantles to conceal three dark-clad people between them, one of whom leaned on another. Lord Ulmarr sprinted ahead, shouting obscenities between gasps.
One of the White Mantles took a quarrel in the back, collapsed in a heap. Another of his brothers stopped to help him, but a quarrel found him, too. In their midst, King Arryk turned and shou
ted. The Mantles hauled him bodily out of range, while he reached back for the fallen guards. The guard who had stopped to aid his brother rose and tore the quarrel from his thigh and followed, but too slowly. The alarm had sounded, and soldiers flocked to the battlements. Quarrels rained down. He lagged farther and farther behind. Carah thought he even looked hesitant to catch up, feared he might turn and make himself the target.
“To hell with it,” Da growled, and before Carah could stop him he burst from cover. As he ran past King Arryk, he urged the Mantles on toward the trees, then wrapped an arm around the lagging guard and helped him run free of the quarrels. Only then did Arryk come quietly, leaning again on his companion.
Lady Athmar glared like a rabid she-wolf as she entered the shadows under the branches. Carah backed away. So did Rorin and Maeret. Formidable wall, Uncle Allaran had called her. Carah saw why. Hostility pulsed from her like blood from a heart. She seemed to have lost her weapon, and for that Carah was grateful, else the slaughter might have continued under the trees. “Daxon, you hit?” she demanded.
“No,” her nephew barked. Doubled over and gasping for air, he discovered he bled from a gash across his chest. “Wait, yes! Abyss rot them.”
King Arryk clutched his side and drooped against Lady Athmar, but the weight of a full-grown man taxed her very little.
Drys ran to help Kelyn, but the wounded Mantle shook them off and limped the rest of the way by himself. The wings on his helm boasted more elaborate scrollwork than the others. “Sire?” He tossed aside the quarrel he’d torn from his leg and hurried to help Drona lower Arryk down against the bole of a tree. Dark blood seeped through the king’s fingers. How pale he was. The lieutenant knelt beside him, inspected the wound, cursed.
Carah started toward them, a hand outstretched, remembering her mother’s bleeding finger, but the trammel of horse hooves stopped her. Twenty soldiers led by one of the Falcon Guard galloped around the curve of the castle wall. The White Mantles dived over Arryk; the rest scrambled for cover. Rhogan scooped up his granddaughter and hid behind a sapling. Carah ducked under a shrub with Maeret. Da stooped for the sword he had dropped in the leaves and poised it over his head. But Carah feared that even Kelyn Swiftblade could not outfight twenty armed men. Oh, where was Uncle Thorn? The soldiers rode toward the breach in the wall, walked their horses slowly among the dead and dying, then wheeled for the trees.
“Goddess curse them!” Drys hurried to Kelyn’s side, his fists raised.
Maeret raised a fallen branch to defend herself with.
The soldiers reined in outside the trees, bent low to peer under the branches, but did not attack. “Little birds must-a kept-a flying,” said the Falcon in a strange sing-song accent. “They will-a come out the other-a side. There’s a village. Go!” He gave the shadows one last long look, then put spurs to flanks and tore off after his men.
Drys lowered his fists, Da his sword. “What the—?”
Carah blinked and with Veil Sight saw bright tracers of fairy light, white and yellow, spinning about the wood. “It’s Saffron and Zephyr! Fairy wards. No one can see us.”
Da sagged, braced his hands on his knees.
If the fairies were here, Carah worried in silence, who was protecting Uncle Thorn and Rhian?
“Are you mad, girl?” Drona asked, advancing. Her oaken face was splashed with blood, none of it hers.
“Mad?” The last thing Carah wanted was to be thought a madwoman like Ruthan of Tírandon. “I’m avedra!”
Drona hissed and backed away. “Of course you are.” She turned her glare on Kelyn. “Like your accursed brother. That was him in there, I suppose, covering our rear.”
“Was he all right?” Carah demanded. “And the other avedra with him?”
“There are too many of you around here for my liking. Get away from us.” She returned to her people, and it was strange how quickly the shadows under the trees were divided into two camps, the Fierans under one tree, the Aralorris and Leanians under another.
King Arryk raised a blood-caked hand and beckoned. “Lord Ilswythe.”
Kelyn crossed the shadows into enemy territory and knelt on one knee at Arryk’s side. That bloody hand gestured toward the wounded Mantle. “You risked your life to save my brother and my friend. This is Lieutenant Rance, of Éndaran. I’m indebted to you.” His voice barely rose above a whisper, as if he hadn’t the strength for more. “My guards spend their lives protecting a king, but you would have died to protect a guard.”
“I could see he meant something to you. And too many good men died today.”
A corner of Arryk’s mouth quirked up in a grin, but he hadn’t the strength for that either. “Maybe the things I read about you aren’t true after all.”
“They’re true,” Drona declared, “every word, sire! This man murdered my brother and razed your lands. When we’re back in Fiera we’ll raise our armies and avenge this evil.”
Arryk looked up at her, startled. A sorrow as illimitable as the heavens and as broad as the moors filled the tiny space of his eyes. He managed a shallow shake of his head, then his eyes glazed over. His body slid slowly down the tree trunk, leaving a smudge of blood on the bark.
“No!” Carah’s outburst drowned out the gasps and cries of horror. She shoved her father aside and fell to her knees beside the White Falcon. Too late, too late, she thought, hands going to each side of his bloodless face. Why did I wait?
“Don’t touch him, wench!” Lady Athmar lunged, but Kelyn intercepted her arm.
“Hands off, Drona. Hurt her and I won’t think twice about shoving you outside the wards.”
Carah didn’t hear the rest of their argument, though part of her knew it was heated, nearly violent. Arryk’s chest was so still beneath her fingers, his skin growing cool and gray and putty-like. Too late. Veil Sight revealed only a shadow where light had burned. No, there it was. The thinnest of strands rising up from his body and through the trees. It gleamed like sunlight on a single thread of a spider’s web, but was it enough? Sire? Arryk, don’t leave us.
Her eyes fluttered shut, and her awareness plunged down through her hands and into the White Falcon. This was no cut finger, but she understood this. Flesh broken from flesh, vein from vein. Beat, heart, she commanded. No, wait, that was wrong. She had to tend to the wound first or a heartbeat would only cost him more blood. Her hand pressed his right side, found that the sword’s blade had punctured deep, stopping only when it hit a rib. She shuddered, afraid. The damage was enormous, but the proper flow of energies in her own body showed her how to fix it, if only she had time. For now, just the basics. A tingling sensation danced down from the base of her skull, across her shoulders, into her hands. Broken veins closed. Tissue of liver and muscle stitched together again. They seemed to understand their intended order and reconnected with only the slightest urging.
When Carah was satisfied the veins would hold together, she set her hand over Arryk’s heart. Miraculous impulses caused her own to beat; in its drumming was the music of the Mother-Father, clouds of light circling a mountaintop. Awake, Kharah. You have work to do. She relayed each pulse down through her hand and into Arryk’s chest. Tiny, reluctant movement quivered and grew with each new shock of energy. Blood began sliding through his veins again, sluggish rivers. Breathe with me, she urged. Her focus turned to her lungs drawing air. Arryk gasped and matched her breath for breath, shallowly, but without will of his own. His eyes remained lifeless; his azeth still hovered high in the trees. The thread anchoring him to his body was less visible than before.
Carah panicked. It wasn’t working!
Arryk! You can’t abandon your people, not now. They need you more than ever. You don’t have to fight. Is that why you’re running? There must be other ways. Please. Come back to us.
The silver thread shivered. Istra? Can’t find you. Too tired.
Here, Carah said. I’m here. So very close. Feel where I am. Come back to me.
For an instant, she feared the thread
had snapped, that he’d fled away, but a glow grew softly outward from his face, pushing aside the shadow of death, silver and summer green and gold. His eyes shut, a motion independent of Carah’s will, then opened groggily again. But she still feared to release him.
You …, he said. Their breathing and the rhythm of their hearts kept time, like a dance.
Don’t make me do that again, she implored.
He managed a meager shake of the head. Slowly, reluctantly, Carah eased her awareness free of him, letting go of his heart last of all. It took on a rhythm of its own, weaker than she liked, but steady. “Rest,” she whispered. He didn’t need convincing. His eyes closed. Cries of dismay echoed through the trees. “Be still.” The otherworldly power in her command surprised even Carah herself. “He only sleeps.” She raised her hand from Arryk’s chest, and weakness and blinding pain washed through her. She crumpled over.
Kelyn caught her and cradled her and kissed her throbbing forehead. “You’re a wonder, dearheart. And look what your fairies did while you were busy.”
Beyond the eaves of the wood stood a driverless wagon drawn by four drays. It was a wine wagon, wide and sturdy enough to haul several rows of heavy barrels. Rhogan lifted his granddaughter into the bed. She still seemed only half-conscious. Rorin stood beside it like a man who’d forgotten how to walk. Rhogan nudged him, and he climbed aboard. Drys and Maeret and Daxon followed. The White Mantles lifted Arryk carefully while Drona demanded, “Where the hell are we supposed to go?”
“East,” Kelyn said, helping Carah to her feet.
“Why?”
“Because Thorn Kingshield said so. I don’t know why. But until you can see what he sees, Lady Athmar, we listen to him. Get in the wagon.”
“Will we circle round for home, Da?” Carah held onto him tightly because her legs were as shaky as reeds in the wind.
He glanced north across the hills, a terrible bleakness aging his face. “No. Valryk’s men will look there for us first.”
