by Shea Godfrey
“Keep the looking glass close. When I send for you, meet me at the main crossroads just south of the Gonnard Forest. We will make our way home from there. The first battle will be very soon, for Serabee has grown impatient. I could smell the hunt in his blood the last I saw him. We will have but a short time to prepare.”
“And the princess?”
“She shall walk her own path from this day forth, though she will find us in the end.”
Mesa frowned. “Luka will not like that. Is she in danger?”
“Luka has no say, boy, and Jessa has always been in danger. Luka may be a chieftain, but he holds no authority when it comes to the gods. She is not a helpless woman who needs looking after. When the battle comes at last, Jessa will become the Vhaelin priestess she was destined to be. None shall rule her actions ever again.”
Mesa blushed at her tone. “Yes, Lady.”
The man named Enders cleared his throat, a tangible anticipation bright in his eyes. His hair was plaited and the long braids, too numerous to count, fell onto his shoulders and down his back. He was young and his build spoke of easy strength and speed, the green sash he wore about his waist tied as Mesa’s was. “What of the prophecy, Lady Radha? Has she come back to us?”
Radha considered his question with the scrutiny it deserved. “The sword of our people, or the daughter of the gods?”
“The sword of our people, Lady Radha,” Enders answered. “Is not the Princess Jessa the daughter of the gods?”
“She is,” Mesa said, and his warm laughter drew Radha’s gaze. “Then the sword of the people has returned to us, as well, has she not? And I believe that I have seen her.”
“Yes,” Radha confirmed. “Jessa has met her match. Tannen Ahru has returned to us.”
Enders gave a sharp call and then looked contrite, though his brown eyes were vivid with pleasure. “Forgive me.”
“It’s all right, boy, I did the same,” Radha said, soothing him, warmed by the excitement that filled the room. It was a prelude of hope, and hope was something her people had done without for far too long. “She will be as your dreams have shown you—though she is her own even more, does this make sense?”
His grin was a bit giddy. “Yes. Yes, Lady.”
“Purchase the steel you will need,” Radha instructed Mesa, “and the gear that Luka wishes for, and whatever else you feel our people will need. It shall be a fair bit of time and then some before we shall find again the likes of what Lokey has to offer. Keep in mind that there will be times of blood between that day and this.”
“It is a rich city,” Durasha added. His hand rested with ease and experience upon the hilt of his sword. “Their king seems a fair man.”
“Who’s to say?” Radha answered. “I suppose time will tell, though for now, we must deal with the Fakir. There’s a bit of a trick to what I wish for. Who will help me?”
“I will,” Enders said, volunteering, the emotion in his smile no longer sweet but decidedly lethal. “Give me the privilege, Lady Radha.”
“And I,” the fourth man said. His name was Alain, and he was dressed as the others were. His hair was a dusty blond and he let it flow free and straight about his shoulders. “Allow me, my Lady.”
Radha was pleased at their confidence as well as their genuine respect. It was an honor she had earned many years past, yet it held the feel of a courtesy that was no longer familiar. “Do not forget to leave one alive, yes?”
Chapter Three
Jessa opened her eyes in the darkness and lay quiet beneath the fast beat of her heart. She knew that she had slept, though her sojourn in the land of dreams had been a strange one. She could not remember what she had seen. She remembered a voice that spoke with an urgent, fiery passion, and the warmth of a touch upon her face, but that was all. She remembered a warning, perhaps, for the voice had told her she must wake up.
The shadows that hovered about the bed were thick, and she turned her head upon the pillow, Darry close beside her and fast asleep. No such dreams for you, my love. You always seem to sleep so sweetly, though perhaps that is Hinsa’s doing. The blood of a golden mountain panther would seem a wonderful gift to have when one wishes for sleep. Only a cat in the sun appears so satisfied.
And then it hit her. The smell.
She set her hand upon the mattress and sat up.
It was dark beyond the closed shutters, for she could feel the night and she could taste the difference in the air. It was not yet too late, but the moon was high and the world had changed with it. She moved beyond her lover’s touch, and Darry’s bandaged hand slid to the quilted spread, as if content with the warmth that Jessa left behind.
She could smell it. Jessa could smell it with her very blood.
A narrow column of moonlight fell between the the outer balustrade door and its frame, the pale light upon the floorboards barren and without warmth as she swung her legs over the edge of the bed and stepped to the floor. Someone had opened the chamber door, though it had been locked when she had finally taken her rest.
“Darry, wake up,” Jessa whispered as she moved to the end of the bed.
It was a cold and bitter smell, like the scent of blood upon a blade.
The words of a verse moved suddenly through her mind, cloaked in the cadence of Radha’s long-ago voice, the child’s poem all but forgotten until her senses remembered its song. Like winter’s icy chill, their blood flows thick for naught but ill. Upon the blade their hate runs hard, they smell of death and bitter char—
A surge of panic burst within her chest and she let out a shout. “Ahla fahleece!”
The spell pulled hard at the faint light in the room, the energy around her compelled from its natural state and bound beneath her immediate control. The witchlight formed upon the palm of her right hand and curled into a ball of blazing white fire. She cast, and it sped across the length of the chamber.
“Darry!” Jessa shouted as the darkness came to life beneath a shower of white and blue streamers. “Zaneesha Fakir!”
Darry leaped from the end of the bed as Jessa stumbled back beneath the reach of dark arms and the flash of a knife. She slapped aside the blade and slammed into the man’s chest, both of them taken to the floor. Darry grabbed his head with both hands and cracked his skull against the floor as the curved knife sliced through the waist of her shirt. She fought for the weapon with one hand and threw a punch with the other, his jawbone rock hard against her knuckles.
A colossal figure rose up behind Darry as she struggled and Jessa answered the threat. “Bella Vhaelin,” she summoned, and the man spun about. Jessa’s open hand landed firmly against his chest.
The fingers within the grip of Darry’s left hand caved beneath the pressure she exerted, and her opponent cried out as bones were snapped. She snatched the dagger from his hand and, without hesitation, pushed the blade through the skin beneath his chin.
Jessa stood as still as stone but a few feet away, her right hand upon the chest of a man nearly twice her size. The air around them swirled and her black hair moved within it, lifted from her shoulders like heavy tendrils of dark smoke.
Darry rushed forward, and Jessa tried to keep the spell within her thoughts as her lover slid upon a knee. Darry spun sideways beneath Jessa’s outstretched arm and her blade sliced with precision through the tendons at the back of the giant man’s knee, Darry on her feet within the next moment as the balustrade door was kicked open.
Jessa felt the light of the Vhaelin churn low in her belly and rise up as her eyes locked upon the hooded face before her. She felt the influence of her blood as the words danced through her mind as never before, words that she knew but had never used in earnest. Power sang through her body as the spell came to life, and she wanted to laugh aloud at the endless depths, at the heat that raced like a downpour of sunlight through her veins. There was no substance that it could not pass through and she knew it.
Jessa recognized at once that the words were right. She understood their true purpose as
her hand pushed through the muscles of his chest as if they were made of thin parchment.
Across the room, Darry turned the oncoming sword with her dagger and pushed, afraid that if they did not clear the room Jessa would fall victim to their brawl. She took a blow to the shoulder, but her left hand closed upon the guard of the attacker’s sword even as her right struck fast and true, her stolen weapon finding a new home deep in his belly. She grabbed his tunic and shoved until they stumbled through the door and toppled to the stones of the balustrade.
Darry rolled to the side, pushed to her feet, and took a breath in order to cry out for the guard, but instead she was yanked backward, her left hand caught beneath a wire garrote. She planted her boots and shoved as the cord burned along the underside of her jaw. The cord sliced through her sleeve and into the skin beneath, but it gave her the leverage she needed to turn her head and drop clear.
The back of a hand slapped her and she spun farther onto the balcony as yet another enemy appeared. She used her momentum and tumbled smoothly over her left shoulder, landed on a knee, and seized the hilt of a fallen sword. The oncoming blade missed her by inches as she twisted at the waist, dropped her shoulder, and struck.
The weight of his body pushed back against her blade, and she stood up beneath it, his tunic ripping as her sword pushed through and through. She took possession of his sword before he dropped it and shoved him aside.
The whistle she gave pierced the night as she tossed her new weapon into her right hand and attacked.
She feinted to the left before her two remaining opponents and then spun to the right, her weapon held high and close. The sword sliced through one throat and stopped at the second as her steel slid along a thicker blade. Both swords were pushed to the floor and then back around as she was forced to defend.
The sound of their battle rang out against the stones of the terrace and Darry accepted the final swordsman’s advance. She marked how he played to her left, allowed him the move, and then let his sword through. She leaned close as he was pulled off balance and struck him with her fist, whipping his head to the side. Darry hooked the pommel of her sword over the tang of his own, pushed their weapons downward, slammed her boot upon the steel, and pulled the unguarded dagger from his belt. She sliced his throat.
She stepped over his body, picked up his sword, and shouted at the top of her lungs. Her voice echoed along the terrace and into the night as she called for the Palace Guard.
*
Emmalyn Durand, the eldest royal daughter, pushed to her feet and the chair scraped against the floor with a lonely sound.
She stared at the papers strewn across the surface of the desk, deeds of land and titles of ownership that she had not looked at since the anniversary of Evan’s death. Once every few months she would attend to the business of her first husband’s inheritance, but the deeds she would only look at once a year. She would lay the papers out and run her hands upon the parchment; and she would gaze upon Evan’s signature and that of his father and his older brother, Cieran. She would drink cool spring wine from the pewter chalice that had been Evan’s upon their wedding day, and she would drift within the memories of a love that had been taken from her much too quickly.
His death had been meaningless, and though she could still see her brothers carrying his lifeless body into the Great Hall, it was not a memory she chose to dwell on. That such a great horseman had fallen to his death during an afternoon ride through the Gonnard Forest was not a legacy that her heart chose to honor.
She would remember his long hands and the fall of his unruly blond hair and his deep blue eyes. She would remember his mouth and his kiss, and how he would sit at the end of their bed, his lean body naked upon the sheets, as hers was. She would listen to him tell of how he would build a new manor upon their land, and a stable that would rival even the king’s. He’d wanted to breed horses, and he would laugh when she teased him and demanded to know when, always when. Not long now, my peach, he would say, and she would run her hand along the skin of his thigh.
She would remember making love to him, and the feel of his flesh inside her body. He had been as tender a lover as he was a man, and Emmalyn remembered how she had prayed even that first night that she would have a child as soon as possible. She had wanted Evan’s children. She had wanted his seed to take hold inside her body and grow. She had wanted to watch him with their sons, blond-haired boys set loose in the long grass and sunshine.
Her touch moved with care upon the parchment as she thought of her new lover. “So different than Royce…”
Perhaps it was time to let go just a bit more, and Darry was an heir that would be worthy of Evan’s dream. When she had come of age and had her choice of lands, Darry had claimed but a few titles, none of which held any great value. A stretch of land beyond the cliffs of Antioch where the beaches were as soft as silk, and a massive swath of territory through the heart of the Green Hills. It was wild and completely unlivable and their father had fought with her that it could not be used for anything, except for getting lost in and eventually mauled by something that was faster than she was. Darry had only smiled and signed the papers.
But Evan’s lands would give Darry power should she need it, and the people who lived there would take to her, Emmalyn was certain of it. Eventually her sister and her lover would find their way to the haven it would represent. She smiled to think of Darry and Jessa together. She could see even now how Jessa had sat beside her sister as Darry had lain with fever, Jessa’s touch so very tender when she thought no one would see.
She took a drink from Evan’s chalice as she turned back into the room and wondered if their father truly understood all they would lose if Darry disappeared from their lives.
Emmalyn swallowed hard upon the tart spring vintage and slowly lowered her goblet.
The man beside her bed pulled the black hood from his head. He did so with his left hand, for in his right he held a sword. He spoke in a rough but quiet voice, and Emmalyn recognized the Lyonese words at once, though she did not understand their meaning.
“Blessed Gamar,” she whispered and the blood roared in her ears. Her hand trembled as she raised her cup and gauged the distance to the door. “I believe you are lost, yes?”
The man considered her with a curious expression and then smiled as she took another sip from her drink. “Pittan cunta, pretty whore.”
Emmalyn raised an eyebrow as she noticed his damp hair, his weight, and the curved daggers at his belt. “No,” she responded, and though her voice trembled her hand no longer did. “Not a whore, just a bit of royal blood.”
His brow came down and he took a step forward.
Emmalyn backed into her chair with a clumsy step.
He stopped his advance. “Pontius. Bartik.”
Emmalyn’s attention was drawn to the balcony that overlooked the palace gardens, whereupon one man, and then another, stepped from the dark of the terrace and into the light.
Emmalyn heard a high-pitched whistle moving through the night.
“Cunta, yes?” One of the late arrivals laughed at his own question, and Emmalyn’s blood turned to ice as he reached down and began to unbuckle his sword belt.
She eyed the man beside her bed and thought of the thin rapier that Darry had given her for Solstice, and that it now hung useless in her dressing room in its polished leather sheath. She raised Evan’s chalice. “Wine?”
Her shoulders gave a small flinch as he approached, every ounce of control she possessed rooting her boots to the floor. His fingers brushed against hers as he took possession of the cup.
Emmalyn seized the pewter decanter from the desk and swung it as he drank. When it struck the side of his head, she grabbed for the closest knife on his belt.
*
The High King Owen Durand pushed forward in his chair and cocked his head as the hairs lifted upon the back of his neck. He shifted upon the cushions and looked back across the chamber, the lamp upon the table warm in its glow. He had be
en deep in thought and on the verge of dozing off, despite that every fiber of his being was in some way restless. Exhaustion had its uses, he knew, and he wondered if he would ever again experience a night of untroubled sleep. The distant call that had roused him had most likely been a trick of the mind. Or perhaps a nighthawk.
He rose from his seat and moved across the room in order to satisfy the tick of nervousness that fluttered through his chest. With a quick glance toward the archway that led to the bedroom, he noted that Cecelia, his queen, had finally put out the lamp. He did not think she slept, though she might pretend for his sake.
He opened the chamber door and took a step within the shadows of their private corridor, in search of the familiar tabards of the Palace Guard. He found no one at the end of the hallway and his instincts warned him back at once. He grabbed the door, recognizing the distant cry that called forth the guard. Darry.
The bolt from a crossbow took him high in the right thigh, and he let out a howl of anguish as he stumbled and tripped into the room. He hit the floor with a grunt and the pain exploded throughout his hip.
“Cece!” he yelled and grabbed the edge of the door. A second bolt buried itself in the heavy oak but an inch above his hand. He surged to his feet and used all his weight, a rattle in his bones as the door slammed shut beneath his momentum and he threw the lock.
He grasped the quarrel where it jutted from the flesh along the outside of his thigh, and with both hands he snapped the shaft. His head went back and he let out an angry snarl.
“Owen?”
His eyes snapped open at his wife’s voice, and he yanked his sword belt from where it hung upon the peg. “To me, Cece!” he shouted in a booming voice as he pulled the blade free.
She screamed.
Chapter Four
As still as death were the words that came into Darry’s mind as she knelt before the foot trunk at the end of the bed. Or close enough to it, she amended beneath a swell of panic. Her hand trembled as she reached for Jessa’s leg and wondered if she would encounter stone or the warmth of her lover’s flesh.
