Protector of the Flight

by Robin D. Owens

  There weren’t many beasts—perhaps twenty—and the fight was quick. It took a few minutes to defeat them.

  It took an eternity while Calli steadied Dark Lance and strove to reach Marrec, to make sense of the emotions racking him.

  Thealia’s usual shout of triumph rose through the air. She held her malachite baton aloft. “Victory! Return to the Castle.”

  One more tremor seized Marrec and he wheeled Dark Lance westward, to the sea. The other fighters flung bubbles of Distance Magic around themselves and headed southeast. Calli flew after Marrec. Her husband was hurting.

  He didn’t fly to the Castle, didn’t fly toward home. Calli sent a mental demand to Alexa for her and Bastien to ensure Diaminta’s well-being that night.

  Sleepover! Alexa had replied, making Calli smile, knowing her child was in good hands.

  A half hour passed before Marrec shook off his blinding emotions. He came to himself all at once, sat up straight in the saddle, sheathed his sword. He brushed her mind with his own, cool and logical as usual. Calli released the soft hold she had on Dark Lance.

  Mouth grim, Marrec turned the winged horse back to where the battle had been. No one from the Castle had fallen, and the slain horrors still lay as heaps on the ground, being picked over by scavengers. Marrec angled slightly to the northeast to an area about a hundred yards from the battle.

  Finally, they set down in the long evening shadows. Dark Lance dropped his head, his sides bellowed, his coat was beaded with sweat. Marrec swayed in the saddle, eyes closed, body stiff.

  Calli dismounted, Sang a short, soothing tune and the tack removed itself from the winged horses, settled to the long grass growing in a large, lush square. The sun flung one last bright ray into the sky, then vanished. She walked to her Pairling in night. Stood beside Dark Lance and put her hand on Marrec’s thigh. “What’s wrong?”

  He jerked his chin at a half wall covered in ivy. “I never wanted to remember, but since this afternoon, I can’t forget. My…” His voice was hoarse, he licked his lips, turned his head to look down at her. “This land, this place was my old home.”

  She stilled, let her mind and heart reach out to him, experienced the flow of images. No pleasant ones this time, the battle had ensured that. The renders and the slayers of that day superimposed upon past images, the sounds of battle leached away until no slide of sword against claws was heard, no shouts of human triumph. Instead there was the ripping sounds of slaughtered humans, the screams of dying people. She laid her head in his lap, circled his lean waist with her arms. “Come away, we’ll fly home.”

  “No. That’s cowardly.”

  He lifted a hand as if it were heavy, set it on her head. More memories…colorful ones of blood and destruction—fabric, furniture, homes, people—flooded her. She bit her lip to keep her own cry of horror from escaping. “To…to the Castle then. We can bathe. Cuddle Diaminta.”

  Marrec flinched and she knew she’d made a mistake. He was too much in the past, with his parents, his brothers as children, to be reminded of another young one—so vulnerable to hurt and death.

  But all he said was, “No. I must face the memories sometime.”

  The sky had lit with a nearly full moon. His features seemed sharper limned with silver, his face expressionless. His eyes glittered and Calli couldn’t tell if it was with anger or grief. He’d shut his emotions away. He swung his opposite leg over Dark Lance’s back and Calli retreated a few steps. When he was on the ground, he stroked his volaran’s neck. “Good boy.”

  Dark Lance blew out a breath.

  Marrec straightened his shoulders, walked slowly to the slightly curving wall before them. “This was the Temple. The only building made of stone.” He reached out to touch it, then withdrew his hand. His neck tilted back as he looked at the stars. “Even the sky reminds me now. I know these patterns. Mountain Moon, soon to be End of Summer Feast Day.” Now he rolled his shoulders. The burden of memory was hard for him—hard to carry, hard to speak of. Calli kept quiet.

  “I think…I think I would have left Gardpont. Gone south to some town.” His lips twitched up in a parody of a smile, set again into a line. “I was restless…then.”

  She’d never met a man so entrenched in home, now. And now she knew why.

  Their bootsteps made no sound as they walked on the verdant ground. Marrec circled around the temple, scuffed a foot and revealed a threshold. He turned and situated himself. “Nothing left of our wooden homes. The two shops. My father was a cobbler.” He lifted his boot and stared at the sole. “He did work equal to this, though this leather was far beyond his means.”

  “He was an excellent artisan, then,” Calli said stiltedly. She had to think hard for words, and the fancy ones were the only ones that came. God, how was she going to help her man? Especially when his memories flickered like broken film in front of her eyes—a few frames of the round temple—covered with roses in the summer, stark with snow in the winter. The area in front of it had been wide and dusty, a gathering place—then had been piled with half-seen mangled bodies when the child Marrec stumbled from devastation to devastation after the monsters had left. His eyes had been puffy with tears, his throat raw with the mewling grunts that were the only sound he could make.

  Her arm jingled with chain mail as she put it around his waist. They both stopped for a moment, her thought matching his. The townspeople had no armor, few weapons. And now both he and she were battling the horrors. The killing had never ended for him.

  Yet.

  His head lifted, his nostrils flaring, and Calli herself could smell the rich land, the forgotten grain and vegetables and flowers gone wild. The stench of battle a few hours ago. All mixed up with the night wind carrying chill from the mountains. He shuddered and a snippet of his memory—of tying a rag around his face at the hideous scent of death as he went from door to door looking for survivors like him, finding no one. Seeing even the youngest torn…she whimpered. Couldn’t help herself.

  He didn’t notice, but kept walking…down a street that was hard-packed dirt in his recollection, until they were about three hundred feet from the temple. He angled to the right, flung out an arm. “There. There was my home.”

  Nothing marked it.

  He walked in, ducking as if the lintel was now too low for his adult height.

  She stopped, then saw as he had last seen. His mother with a slayer’s spine in her eye, his father raked open, insides gleaming through five deep slashes, staring at the ceiling, his two dead brothers…Calli turned aside, bent double, vomited. Was brought back to herself with his low groan, saw him fold to his knees, his back arch and a yell of anguish rip from him. She grabbed a big leaf and wiped her mouth, stumbled to him and fell to her own knees, grabbed him and held on as he once again screamed his throat raw.

  Like him, she endured the memories.

  Unlike him, she wept.

  Finally they were too exhausted to grieve. Marrec held her close. “I have lived this, now faced this. It is…crippling. It is nothing I want inside me, to harm you or our children or myself.” They toppled sideways to the cool earth, soft with fragrant grasses. “I can’t remember! Not ever again.”

  Sweet darkness pinpointed with the light of stars enveloped them, then blackness rolled over them as if a heavy cloak comforted them, hid them. The cloak turned to fog in her mind, penetrating her, finding the memories she’d just shared with Marrec. Images disintegrated into nothingness. Calli hugged him tightly, knowing the same thing happened to him. He gave the memories up willingly to the planet of Amee, who absorbed them like the fallen dead.

  When they reached the Castle early the next morning, Alexa and Bastien awaited them, Diaminta in Bastien’s arms, her fingers twined in his black-and-white hair. Their squires took the flying steeds and led them with much praise back to the stables.

  Diaminta stretched her hands out to Marrec. “Pa. Pa. Pa.”

  He took her, held her close. Calli came near and the little girl turned her head a
way, but watched her from the corner of her eyes. Calli kissed her soft golden cheek. Diaminta snuggled closer to Marrec.

  “She hardly looked at me—Auntie Alexa—at all,” Alexa grumbled. “Didn’t even play with me. She likes the feycoocus, though.”

  “Fin. Fin. Fin!”

  “I guess so,” Calli said.

  Marrec sniffed at Diaminta. “Smells like you need a change.”

  Bastien closed his eyes. “Again?” He opened his eyelids and cocked his head. “I think one of the new volarans that flew in last week is calling me.” He took off at a trot toward an arena.

  “I’ll take her up to our rooms and meet you for breakfast in the dining hall.” Marrec smiled at Calli easily, yet the lines around his eyes seemed a little deeper, the silver in his hair a little wider.

  “Sure,” she said. “I want to check in on my horses.” She and Alexa strolled toward the horse pens.

  Alexa said nothing until Marrec was out of earshot. “Lady Hallard knows Marrec’s past. She told us yesterday’s battle took place where Gardpont village was destroyed.”

  A shadow seemed to cross the sun, dimming the light. Calli rubbed her arms. “I don’t recall. Not much. Just that Marrec lived through the massacre again that day, and I did, too.”

  Alexa shuddered. “Poor little boy.”

  “Yeah.” Calli stretched, settling into the fact that she’d always be missing some memories. “I do recollect that what he saw was enough to cripple a person emotionally for the rest of his life.” Like a wife abandoning a man and their daughter and a ranch, leaving the little girl in a locked room so she wouldn’t wander. “And Marrec didn’t want that,” Calli continued softly. “He wants to be as whole as possible for us—and for himself. He let the land take the memories away. I did, too, I guess, since nothing vivid comes to mind, and I recall that there were…vivid…images.” She swallowed, strode faster to the horse pen and held out a hand to welcome her horses. Solid friends that she knew. “I didn’t know Amee could do that.”

  “I didn’t, either.” Alexa stroked a horse nose shoved in her hand. “Relinquished memories. Huh.” She frowned. “That’s stronger than I would be. I’d never let such memories go, and maybe my heart would shrivel. And as my beloved Bastien would say, ‘Not much comes out of a shriveled heart.’” She smiled. “I can just hear him saying it.”

  She looked around, but Bastien was nowhere in sight. Her gaze went back to Marrec. “He’s had a tough enough life as it is.” Shrugging, she gave a half smile. “He was an orphan here. I was an orphan in Colorado. I listened when they talked of him.”

  “You didn’t put it in your Lorebook of Exotiques.”

  Alexa lifted her nose. “Of course not. I think those books should end with the Snap.”

  A little chill coated Calli’s stomach. “I don’t want the Snap.”

  “I can’t see it taking you,” Alexa agreed. She grinned, nudged Calli in the ribs. “Still got your task, and your training to do, Volaran Exotique.”

  “Speaking of which, I think it may be time for another lesson.”

  “I’m doing well. I ride my own volaran in practice now! I do miss Bastien behind me when we fight, but am glad I’m off horses on the battlefield.”

  “And so you should be. A battlefield is no place for horses.” She tangled her fingers in the mare’s stiff mane. No one would know, now, that this beautiful animal had been abused, and she sure wouldn’t ever let anyone ride her into battle.

  Alexa said, “It’s no place for anyone. Your man, there—” she nodded as Marrec and Diaminta disappeared around the edge of the stables, Diaminta babbling and waving her arms “—he’s filled out. Not quite so lean as he was. Finally getting enough food, I’d say. Your coming has been the best thing that’s ever happened to him.”

  Tears prickled behind Calli’s eyelids. “Thank you.”

  Alexa’s smile was gentle. “I’ve noticed that you have a great deal of patience. You had to in order to get me flying on a volaran, to work with others and the volarans themselves. Your daughter will love you, just wait and see.”

  Calli hugged her. “Thanks. But compliments won’t get you out of a lesson.”

  That afternoon when Calli and Marrec were playing with Diaminta, the siren screeched. Calli heard the new additional bell mixed in the alarm that was added. Retrousse. The Dark was sending monsters to an old battlefield. She listened hard, heard the modality of notes that indicated the place. The same as the day before. Gardpont. Her shoulders tensed. Diaminta flung herself at Marrec and held on hard. “Pa. Pa. Pa.” She knew they left when the siren wailed.

  His jaw grim, Marrec shook his head. “We’re off rotation until tomorrow.” A hint of relief showed in his eyes. Calli heard the shouts of Marshalls and Chevaliers, the jangle of armor, the swish of volaran wings as they rose to the sky.

  She was relieved, too. No one had said anything, but she was sure she wasn’t the only one who thought that the call to arms the day before to Gardpont was part of the ongoing campaign to harm her. Remove or cripple or kill Marrec when battling inner and outer demons and she would die, too.

  But the relief didn’t last long.

  Every day after that, at varying times during the day, the siren sounded. Retrousse. And always to the same place, the battle plain that had once held the town of Gardpont. Additional alarms rang, too, along the northwestern border, near Gardpont.

  Retrousse here, too, monsters being sent where greater battles had been fought, in larger numbers.

  Marrec grew strained, paler. The fact that his memories were gone should have been a boon. But every day he faced that his town had once been here, that the ground showed where his family had fallen, in the house that had disintegrated around them. That the village itself was gone forever.

  Calli was sure that if they had had to fight time and again here with total recall of Marrec’s experiences, they’d have gone mad. And again she wondered if that was the point.

  As it was, Marrec became more somber, withdrew from her emotionally. It was slight but noticeable to Calli and she yearned to help. So she insisted that when they could, they return home and worked on their estate—the volaran areas, the horse paddocks, the arenas. He threw himself into the reconstruction, becoming an ideal landowner.

  After visiting the village on their land his Song was more cheerful, as if he carried the image of this village close to his heart to replace the one he’d lost.

  He, too, learned—of ranching methods here in the north, of crops and trade. Of what the villagers needed from them, and how he and Calli could help the people who welcomed them. They certainly won enough money fighting to build whatever they pleased.

  For three weeks as summer grew less hot, and fall drew near, battle-weary Marshalls and Chevaliers fought, flying in shifts from the Castle, returning. Those who survived. Attrition took a toll. The next oldest Marshall Pair died, as did the newest, and the Castle grieved. One or two Chevaliers, usually the lowest of the low—like Marrec had been—fell in every fight, and this haunted the man.

  The loss of every volaran haunted Calli. Some would perish with their fliers, if they’d been good partners. Some had broken wings and bones and minds that couldn’t be easily mended and flew to the sanctuary that Bastien offered—and land she’d set aside for them on her and Marrec’s new ranch, too.

  Pascal and Marwey earned their batons, but Seeva tried and failed to win her reins.

  Battle debriefings grew shorter, not much to mull over than what had been said before. One afternoon the fighters of the morning sat in the grand entry hall of Horseshoe Hall. Once again most of the force had had to turn out because they’d fought on an ancient battlefield in the northeast where a mass of horrors had invaded.

  An idea that had been floating around in the back of Calli’s brain bloomed. From the corner of her eye, she watched Marrec, with his usual serious expression. He didn’t like these meetings, no matter how short. He’d much rather be doing his duty, or following his
passion—managing the estate. With his natural business savvy and her talent for teaching and training, they’d be wealthy if they ever got a chance to truly settle down.

  She coughed to attract attention, then stood. “We’re always flying to the same area.”

  Swordmarshall Thealia raised her eyebrows but said nothing about Calli stating the obvious.

  “I know the Distance Magic isn’t a great energy-sapping spell, but it does bleed everyone of Power. We haven’t battled the Dark anywhere except the northeast in a month—”

  Marian spoke, “I think it’s because the Dark doesn’t have a human master to control the horrors. To order them and move them to wherever they were kept to invade. Instead the Dark must send them itself. I think retrousse battles are easier for the Dark.” Marian stood, too. She and Jaquar, and a couple of other Circlets, had come and gone through the deadly weeks.

  “If you say so,” Calli said. She sucked in a breath. “Why don’t we…uh…make an encampment a little ways south of the general area where we always fly. I’ve read that this was done before.” She licked her lips, not looking at Marrec, who had stiffened from a slouch beside her. “If even one life is saved because our fighters have more energy, it would be worth it.”

  People talked over each other, discussing, as she sat down. Marrec continued not to look at her. He didn’t say a word. After Thealia called in household experts—the Castle Head of Staff and Seeva—appointing them as liaisons to the Lord who held land near where’d they’d been fighting, she adjourned the meeting.

  The Marshalls and Chevaliers left the hall with new purpose. Simply introducing another option had lifted morale.