“I don’t think Caelfar has it in mind to give her to the Eye,” Lorth replied from beneath the shadows of his hood. “Which reminds me: Freil is awake.”
“How is he?”
“Well enough. When he went after Tansel, he found Aradia in the forest and enlisted her help. They found the sioros standing over Tansel. Aradia attacked the sioros to distract him.”
Eaglin made a sound in his throat. “These women are unbelievable.”
“Freil said the sioros bit Aradia and then came after him. He recalled nothing after that.” He placed a piece of wood on the fire. “I took him to see her. He perceived that she was...elsewhere. I think he’s still standing there.” He rubbed his hands to warm them, and then gestured to Tansel. “Did you tell her about Aradia?” He dropped into Tarthian, a language he knew well from having spent many years in the south. Eaglin had learned the tongue from his mother, as a child.
“Aye. It frightened her, but she didn’t act surprised. She had a worse reaction to the news that her father is in Muin. She hasn’t mentioned it since.” He leaned forward slightly, lowering his voice. “I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but the captain of the Winterscythe is presently being questioned by the Eye for disorderly conduct at sea. I believe Gabran has other things on his mind besides Tansel. He might have come with Freil to avoid inquiry.”
The hunter nodded. “I was getting to that. Freil didn’t bring Gabran. He said the man followed him on his own. He doesn’t know why.”
“Bastard must have arrived in some relief to find Freil knocked out and unable to tell us that. He must be using Tansel as an excuse to be here.”
“It gets worse. Freil told me on the night he approached Gabran and told him about Tansel, someone set fire to the Winterscythe. He thinks Gabran knew something about it.”
“Does he know that for sure?”
“Of course not,” the hunter snorted. “But it would explain why Gabran came here.”
“It doesn’t explain why Freil did.”
“He felt the situation warranted a personal visit,” Lorth said with a black glance.
“Aye, not only violating my orders, but telling the Lords of Eyrie that we were expecting him. No wonder he never came to us in mindspeak.”
“I wondered about it,” Lorth agreed. “Gabran demanded to accompany me here, you know. I had to threaten him to make him stand down. I looked over my shoulder the whole way.”
“Good you did that. I don’t think Tansel is ready to deal with him yet.”
Silence fell between them. For a time, they sat in each other’s presence and gazed into the flames. The moon rose and the wind stilled. An owl hooted in the distance.
Lorth stirred. “I expected Tansel to be a bit more unraveled from her experience with the sioros. You appear to have gained her trust.”
“She had to trust someone.”
“In the shape of a sioros?” the hunter said with a lifted brow.
“I didn’t stay that way.” For long, he added to himself with a wince.
Lorth’s expression relaxed into suspicion. He looked at Tansel, then back at Eaglin. “Freil told me a thing. To bait the sioros, Aradia told him you had already claimed Tansel.”
Eaglin looked up with a start. “She didn’t know that.”
“That’s what I told him.” Lorth tilted his face skyward. “Was I wrong?”
Eaglin said nothing. Aradia’s intuitive claim notwithstanding, it wouldn’t take long for Lorth to sense sex in the air given the way Tansel had acted since his arrival: edgy, shy, and blushing at nothing.
The hunter pushed back his hood, his wolfish eyes aflame and his face as pale as a shroud. He lowered his voice to a whisper. “Are you out of your mind? You actually opened that girl with a gods-forsaken sioros on your trail?”
“He left her for dead on the ofsinae after she refused him. I brought her to a cave for the night because a storm was upon us. It wasn’t my intention to open her. But he had awakened her, Lorth. She was broken and aching with it. I was trained as a priest of Maern to bring a woman through that. When I realized she needed completion, the Destroyer took over. I couldn’t stop it.”
“Your timing is preposterous.”
“Would you’ve had me attempt it in Muin?” Eaglin returned dryly.
Lorth cleared his throat. “You’d better come up with a better explanation than that for Caelfar. Protecting Tansel from the sioros weighs enough on his mind—I don’t think he was planning on having to protect her from you.”
“We don’t have to tell him.”
They looked slowly at each other, and then broke apart with laughter. Lorth said, “He’ll smell you all over her the moment you enter the gates. You know how protective he is.”
“If he had his way, she’d be locked in his garden with nothing but mice, snakes and birds for the rest of her life. She’ll be safer in the world of men by what I gave her than she would be under his legacy.”
“Are you brave enough to tell him that?”
“I may not have a choice.”
Lorth leaned back and shook his head. “It’s been nice knowing you, Eaglin—well, except for that time you beat the tripe out of me for bedding your mother. Other than that, it’s been good. I’ll see you in the halls of the gods.”
Eaglin reached into the waist of his leggings and pulled out his bloodstained scrap. “Don’t hand me off to the gods yet. I got this.”
Lorth leaned forward. “What is it?”
“Maidenblood.”
The hunter took the cloth and moved it under his nose. The assassin in him said, “Wish I’d thought of that.”
“Too late for wishes. Originally, I planned to pass it to the sioros in fulfillment of the vow I made to him.”
“Except now you’ve tricked him into thinking the Destroyer took you for breaking it.” He tossed the rag at Eaglin as if it burned him. “Only your blood will appease him when he discovers that.”
“Perhaps.” Eaglin held the linen aloft and moved his thumb gently over the edge as he recalled the beautiful, wildish cry Tansel had made when he entered her for the first time. “But neither will he turn from the scent of a maiden’s blood. We might be able to use it to get Aradia back.”
“Her body is only barely alive,” the hunter said quietly. “If we fail, he will kill her.”
Eaglin hung his head and closed his eyes as a breeze tore the fire with a whisper. “Either way, she’ll be freed by the attempt.”
*
Long, ragged folds of dove-gray clouds hung over the water. The air smelled sharply of brine. She stood on the sand between black rocks covered with green slime. Water moved around her, oily dark and painted with foam, pulsing with hissing curves and ellipses along the shore. Beyond, the gray ocean heaved. She knew it, though she had never seen it.
In the distance, a ship strained against the wind. It was long and cruel as a hungry wolf, with black sails bearing the standards of the Eye. He was on that ship. Coming for her. Finally.
She lifted her hand and looked at the small stone creature she held, a miniature loerfalos with three lengths of coils, carved scales and a ferocious head baring tiny teeth. Caressing it, she whispered a word. Then she tossed it into the water near her feet. It came alive and wriggled into the surf.
Away from the shore, something dark and slick emerged from the waves at repeated intervals. She drew a deep breath of the moist, pungent air as the enormous length of serpent rose up from the gray and then curved into the depths again. By the time it reached the dark ship, the loerfalos would be full size.
She felt nothing as the serpent’s massive scaled head rose in a tempest of spray and closed over the hull, snapping it off. The ship spun around and tilted into the air, black sails buckling as the masts broke under the force of water and coils. At last, the churning waves released one corner of a sail to flutter wildly into the sky.
Only it wasn’t a sail.
She whirled around and scampered up onto the rocky shore i
n a flurry of slips and starts as the crowharrow raced against the wind at her back. She turned to look behind her, missed a step and fell, screaming as he bore down upon her, his clawed hands outstretched and his teeth bared in a grimace of death.
*
Tansel awoke as if she had just been thrown up on a shore by a torrent of water. Eaglin came to her side before her cry had passed from the forest around them. Lorth was on his feet.
“He’s coming!” she choked. The force of the crowharrow’s presence devoured their small camp, the firelit trunks of the trees, the moon.
“Who’s coming?” asked Lorth, his wolf’s eyes glittering.
“Crowharrow!” She jumped up with her blanket and threw it over Eaglin’s head. “Play dead!” she urged him.
Lorth lifted a brow and gazed north. “You had a dream.”
Eaglin drew the blanket from his face and strode around the fire towards the horses. “She’s a child of wizards. Let’s not take a chance.”
Lorth turned to Tansel with an inscrutable expression that caused the hair on her neck to stiffen. “Keep your back to the fire. If he comes, stay quiet, stay still. Don’t give him any reason to turn his attention on you, and do not run into the forest no matter how good an idea that seems at the time. Do you understand?”
Tansel nodded quickly. She wrapped her arms over her belly and shivered. In the shadows beyond the fire’s golden nimbus, Eaglin lay on the ground in the blanket, his head covered, his body very still. She might have thought him dead herself, until he pushed the blanket from his face and softly called out: “Cast a Pentacle.”
“There isn’t time,” Lorth returned over his shoulder. “You’d best hope he hasn’t seen you walking around. Ware!”
“Lorth!” Something flew through the air towards the fire, falling short. It looked like a piece of white cloth with dark stains on it. Tansel stepped closer and leaned down—but Lorth beat her to it. He snatched it up, and then put her behind him.
Tansel’s heart leapt into her throat like a flushed quail as the trees came alive.
*
Eaglin wrapped himself in his makeshift shroud and whispered a series of powerful cloaking words in the Dark Tongue. Nevertheless, he appreciated the wind. He did not know how subtle a life sign the sioros could detect if he were to focus on it, but he had to assume it wouldn’t take much. The more distractions, the better. Through a cloud bank of unease, he relaxed his body and balanced his consciousness on the edge of physical focus.
He tried not to consider why the sioros was here already.
Tansel had sensed the sioros when neither he nor Lorth had. Impressive. He wondered what she had dreamed.
He stilled himself with the smallest breath as the immortal hunter landed in the clearing. The horses screamed and tore at their leads, trampling the earth and cutting rope burns into the trees until they broke free and fled into the forest in a cyclone of hoof beats. The sioros’ wings beat the air, causing sparks to crackle from the fire. As wood smoke enveloped Eaglin in his blanket, he shut his eyes, held his breath and contemplated how alive he was.
“By the Old One, you will leave this place,” Lorth said in patchy Dark Tongue. The tone of his voice would have made most mortals run away.
“I claim what is mine,” came the sioros’ deep, virulent reply.
“Nothing of yours here. Begone or I shall invoke the Destroyer.”
The sioros’ laughter filled the forest like a blizzard. Eaglin shuddered as the sound ripped through his focus, nearly shattering it.
“The wizard thief”—he hissed the word—“balanced his vow to Menscefaros. Not to me. You will give me his body.”
Eaglin grew cold inside. The immortal was toying with them. He could have come here and simply taken the body, had he wanted it. He knew he had been tricked.
“His body belongs to the earth,” Lorth said boldly. He used the wrong term for earth; what he said was more like world. “You can’t have it.”
In the silence that followed, Eaglin seriously considered ending this ruse and standing up to defend himself.
“Where’d he go?” Tansel said.
“Get out of the shadows,” Lorth said. “Tansel!”
She screamed.
Eaglin knew in his living flesh that the sioros was right above him. As the immortal leaned down, Eaglin felt his breath through the coarse weave of the blanket as he whispered, “Fool...”
“Leave him alone!” Tansel cried.
Lorth shouted her name again, this time as a wizard.
When the sioros withdrew with a sickening growl, Eaglin flung off his blanket and rolled to his feet. Tansel rushed the immortal like a ram. Her breath squeaked short, woven through Lorth’s arcane shouting as the winged creature lifted her into the air by the throat.
Lorth leapt in front of the sioros and held the bloodstained linen aloft, his face pale and terrible. “Myrthra asfn echn, mothct lriosfarn teth.”
The command raised a chill on Eaglin’s flesh. He had no idea how Lorth had known those words; he did not know half of them himself. A black, breathing presence rose from the ground, the structures of the air, the disintegration of fire and the water flowing through all things. It filled the sky, stilled the wind and waited in ancient silence.
The sioros dropped Tansel. She crumpled to the ground, and then half-stumbled, half-crawled, clutching her throat and gasping for air. Eaglin went to her and gathered her into his arms. She was pale as wax and trembling like a rabbit.
“You really have to stop doing that,” Eaglin breathed into her hair.
“He was going to take you,” she choked.
The sioros ignored them. Wings arched and shining in the firelight, he gazed, entranced, at the cloth in Lorth’s fist as if it were his own beating heart hanging in the air. He raised one clawed hand as if to scrape it clean.
Then he let out a deep-throated roar and flew at Lorth with his entire wrath to bear. Eaglin pulled Tansel’s head under his arm as she buried it there.
But the sioros couldn’t touch the linen or the wizard who held it. The immortal stopped short as if he wore a chain around his neck. His scream of anguish rippled through the forest, shaking it from the night.
“Innocence,” Lorth said in the sioros’ language. “I have drawn it back into the Old One’s domain, from whence it came. You cannot take it from me. But you want it, do you not?”
The sioros bared his fangs with a cat scream. “How did you,” he hissed, pacing back and forth before Lorth like a caged wolf.
“I am a Web. I know where it is.”
“Give it to me, Web,” the sioros demanded. “It is mine, promised to me by a thief.”
Lorth tilted his head slightly, catching Eaglin’s gaze with a look that said: That thief would be you. “You will relinquish your claim on him,” he said to the sioros. “Swear by the Old One, and the maiden’s innocence is yours.”
“What are they saying?” Tansel whispered to Eaglin.
“He’s bargaining for my life.”
She leaned up and breathed into his ear, “You said the crowharrow has my aunt. Can Lorth save her too?”
Eaglin lifted his chin, and in fluent Dark Tongue asked his nemesis what Aradia’s life was worth to him. The sioros turned with all the regard of a killing frost on an unmarked grave, and then returned his attention to Lorth’s fist. “That mortal belongs to Menscefaros.” His voice rained, his tone was inexorable and if it were possible for Eaglin to feel any more pity for Aradia than he already did, he felt it now.
Lorth said: “Swear.”
The sioros went to one knee, and swore, in the oldest language, to free Eaglin of his vow in the name of the Old One. Satisfied, Lorth stepped forward, spoke a command over the cloth and tossed it. The sioros vanished with it before it touched his hand.
The hunter’s breath was audible in the silence that followed. Eaglin stood up with Tansel.
“Is he gone?” she said.
Eaglin gently pulled the blanket she he
ld up around her. “He’s gone.” He looked at Lorth, who suddenly appeared very tired. “How did you know how to do that?”
Lorth shrugged. “It just came to me.”
Eaglin breathed a laugh. “Nice. You’re the only wizard I’ve ever known who could come up with an Essence Return command when he can hardly say his own name in the Dark Tongue. I’m beginning to understand why the Aenmos bade me to bring you along.”
“What was that you gave him?” Tansel said.
Lorth looked pointedly at Eaglin. So did Tansel.
“Remember when I told you what I had promised him?” Eaglin asked her. She nodded hesitantly and cast a nervous glance at Lorth. The hunter gazed respectfully at the ground, and Eaglin was glad he couldn’t hear the hunter’s thoughts at that moment. “That cloth had your maidenblood on it. I gathered it the night we were together, and kept it close, in case he returned. I was planning to use it to bargain for Aradia.”
“It was the next best thing to you,” Lorth added, looking up.
Tansel furrowed her brow as if something had just scattered her thoughts into oblivion. Then, she seemed to come to a realization. Eaglin’s heart skipped a beat as she swung around on him. “You told him?”
“Told who?” Lorth asked foolishly.
“You,” she shot back, still glaring at Eaglin. “You told him what we—”
“Tansy—” Lorth started.
“Don’t call me that!”
“He saw it, Tansel,” Eaglin said gently. “It’s not easy to hide such things from wizards, especially Master Lorth. It’s all right. He won’t tell anyone. You’re safe, here.”
“If he saw it, so will the others!” she said.
“No they won’t,” Eaglin assured her. “I am protecting you.”
She gestured to Lorth. “But not from him? It’s none of his business.”
“It’s safe with me, notwithstanding,” Lorth maintained. “On my sword.”
“What do I care about your sword? Now you’ve given my—blood away and my aunt is still lost!”
Eaglin hunkered down by the fire and rubbed his forehead. “Your blood wouldn’t have helped her,” he said. “Aradia is beyond that, now.”
The Winged Hunter Page 20
