by Renee Wildes
Her imagination ran from one evil to the next. She broke into a cold sweat and shuddered.
His eyes gleamed. “A person’s imagination is her own worst enemy. I’ve given you something to think about. Good.” He groped her breast and pinched her nipple. Hard.
Dara clenched her jaw. Tears stung her eyes.
“Since I’ve other plans for you, someone must take your place here. Mayhaps the kitchen wench. So young, so impressionable.” His eyes narrowed. “So eager to live she’ll do anything.”
Tegan. Not yet fifteen, betrothed to the young assistant coachman whose body fed the ravens. A child alone didn’t stand a chance.
Hopelessness pervaded her heart, but she fought it. With life, there’s always hope. Loren and Hani`ena fled north, Xavier south. Help lay in both directions. Loren would return. ’Twas no idle promise.
Jalad dragged her down the corridor to the back stairs, into the wine cellar. Down another stairwell into an airless pit. His torch made no impact on the inky blackness.
A short row of rusted grates barred the cells. He opened one. It creaked with sluggish reluctance, betraying the time since last it moved. Rusty chains hung from crumbling stone walls. Short manacles and chains coiled around a ring bolted into the stone floor, damp with mold. The cell he opened was as wide and long as the body of a cart horse and twice as tall. No windows. No light. No other prisoners for company.
Into this cold black pit of isolation he dragged her. “Best hope naught happens to me. I’m your sole hope for survival. I have food, water and light.” He ran a hand over her hair. “Remarkable.” His gaze seared her. “Serve me and this goes away like a bad dream.”
She spat in his face. “Never.”
“Never’s not as long as you think.” He wiped her spittle from his cheek with her own hair, yanked her to the floor and snapped the cell’s manacles around her wrists and ankles, then removed the first set.
Dara found herself in an uncomfortable crouch, unable to rise. She shifted her weight, knelt, sat down. The cold, wet stone beneath a sparse sprinkling of moldy straw got her off her bare backside in a hurry. Her hands were chained together, to her ankles and to the ring in the floor. The weight pulled against her shoulders. The iron burned to her soul. Without a waste bucket, the straw would soon foul.
Jalad meant to break her. He could do so without ever striking a blow. “Make yourself comfortable.” He withdrew and slammed the door shut. “I can take it as long as you.”
The bolt screeched shut with finality.
***
Dara lost all track of time. She trembled in her chains. Her limbs ached. Trapped in that crouch, all she could do was flex and shift; guaranteed to prevent any rest at all, let alone true sleep.
Jalad appeared at uneven intervals with water, but no food. He hauled her icy body against his warm one, whispered of hot food, hot baths and his own warm bed. “Serve me. I will make you great. I can give you pleasure, riches, power. Yield, and all this goes away. Do you want to die alone? Cold and filthy, forgotten in the dark?”
He went away again.
Her mind wandered. “Lady, protect my sisters above. You know I am innocent. I sheltered Loren…” She faltered. Where was he? Had he succeeded? “There is much I have yet to do. Save me if You will. Let him return for me or send another.” Please, let him return for me. I don’t want to die here. She swallowed hard and took a deep, shuddering breath. “But if it takes my death to turn this tide, then so be it. Just let me stay strong and true to this path, and let someone mourn me when I’m gone.”
Dara reached up with her iron-shackled hands and brushed a tangled mat of hair back from her face, noting her broken fingernails. She was filthy. She stank. She’d frighten children as a witch with her appearance alone. I wish I was a witch. I’d summon a great bat or some such nonsense and fly out of here, to the first hot spring I find. Lady, I want a bath. Her scalp itched. No one should die with greasy hair.
Behind her, something rustled in the straw. She hissed. The rustling ceased. Never afore had she been so glad of her disaffinity for animals. How did rats survive so far from the warmth and light?
Unfamiliar footsteps, too light and quick for Jalad’s, sounded on the stone floor outside her cell. She heard the heavy deadbolt draw back. Rusted hinges groaned their protest as the door shoved open. The light of a single candle pierced the gloom.
She blinked. After total darkness, that single flame sent tiny daggers into her overtaxed brain. She turned her face away and closed her watering eyes.
A gnarled hand rested atop her matted hair. “Ye poor child. Rest easy, daughter. None shall disturb us. Those men dinna know I’m here.”
Dara peeked through a veil of tears to see a bent old mountain woman. “How did you get in? How did you know?”
“I received a message from one of th’ Lady’s servants.”
Had her mind snapped? “How?”
“A dream. Dinna think th’ One Truth now be th’ only power in this land. Remember, there be many yet who follow th’ once ways.”
Did she dare hope? “Can you free me?”
The old woman frowned. “That lies beyond me skill. I carry a bit of aid an’ a message from Her. Yer plea be heard. Another comes. Hold fast. Yer task be barely begun. This trial shall set ye on th’ right path.”
She pulled a stoppered vial from a hidden pocket in her robes. “This ye must drink by Her command. ’Tis vile, but ye must drink it all. Aid asked fer shall thus be provided.”
“What is it?”
“I be not allowed t’ say. Just that by faith in Her ye must drink.” She glanced over her shoulder. “Hurry.”
Dara took the vial. It glowed black-red in her cold hands and warmed as it pulsed with her heartbeat. Ancient, the angular rune inscriptions familiar. She pulled out the cork and sniffed, but no scent hinted at its contents. She glanced at the woman’s face and shrugged. ’Twas not a mortal’s place to question the Lady. Only through Her could this woman have snuck in undetected. Dara braced herself, tossed it back and swallowed hard.
Fire exploded within her, ripping the breath from her lungs. She screamed in her mind, but not even a whimper emerged. The bottle’s contents poured through her like molten metal, searing her soul bare. Time stopped. Blind agony. She writhed on the cold stone of the floor. Wave after wave of endless blistering pain. Her very blood boiled.
“Hold on, child.” An urgent voice pierced the bottomless void. “It shall pass.”
Black fire twisted through her, pushing this way, pulling that. She felt…a change. The raging subsided, left her shaking and gasping in its wake. Lingering warmth coursed through her, chased away the chill. Strength flowed into cramped muscles. Her entire body tingled with a strange awareness. She saw beyond the flame’s light into every corner. Urgent hunger ripped through her belly.
“’Tis done. Ye’ll do well, daughter. I must leave ye now. Me time be gone.”
Through conflicting sensation and lingering despair, Dara focused on her retreating anchor. “Blessed mother, wait. What was that?”
A disembodied voice floated back to her. “Dragon’s blood.”
***
Loren clung to Hani`ena’s mane, mostly recovered from the explosion of fire which had robbed him of breath the day afore. Now the icy calm of Cedric’s mind discouraged his return.
“Thou shalt stay the course.” There was none of the father in the king’s touch. “She hast been given the strength to endure what must come.”
“Block it out,” Hani`ena begged Cedric.
“I cannot.” Regret tinged Cedric’s voice. For a moment, the father revealed himself. “He bound them and that cannot be undone. Through that binding he feels her pain and she his. He canst shield us from her, but not himself.”
Hani`ena tossed her head. Insects crawled into her ears, her eyes, her nostrils, but a full body shake would send Loren headfirst into the muck. She snapped her tail. Green slime clung to the long hairs and splattered against
her sides. Her temper rose at that…creature-of-earth-and-fire-in-woman-form hurting her partner. Odd way to refer to a woman.
Hani`ena still directed her thoughts to the distant king. “Does she know? Can she sense him?”
“Nay. She wouldst not harm him.”
Loren groaned. “Would you please not speak of me as if I was not here?”
Cedric withdrew.
As Hani`ena approached the monolithic half circle of fallen stones, Loren straightened with caution and reverence. The sun was nearly gone, and this was the fourth ruin they’d explored in half as many days.
The swamp made it impossible to track their quarry. The stench of decaying plants and swamp gas hung in the air, the maddening whine of insects a constant distraction. Reduced to prudent sensing, he saw no sign of Moira. Impressive she eluded him thus far.
Hani`ena never put a foot wrong although there was no way to see what the knee-deep pools of murky water hid. All this soft, sucking wetness was not good for her hooves. They needed dry country as soon as possible.
He was not much better off. Without reaching out to Dara, and caution warned him against attempting so obvious a magic, he knew no specifics beyond that initial branding. His entire body ached. Every instinct urged him to turn around, but each time he wavered Hani`ena seized his mind. Her fierce, single-minded focus on the mission kept him in the saddle.
Loren eyed the lengthening shadows and drew his sword. Layers of moss hung like a shroud from a twisted cypress tree. The stone circle loomed ahead in the deepening twilight as Hani`ena splashed forward. “Stop. Hold.”
Hani`ena froze. Loren closed his eyes, isolating Dara’s pain and his own sense of self. “What else? What else is there?”
Outrage-at-betrayal. Shame-at-fleeing. Yearning-for-absent-loved-ones. The jumble of emotions crashed over him.
He grinned in spite of his own weariness. Mortal women were complex emotional creatures and thus easy to single out. He knew the instant Moira became aware of their presence.
Alarm. Stillness. Focus.
“Moira is here,” he sent to Hani`ena.
“She shalt be armed,” the mare warned.
He slid from her back into the cold water without making a ripple. Mud sucked at the soles of his boots. Ignoring the insects crawling over his skin, he lifted his shield from Hani`ena’s shoulder harness.
A blast of killing rage speared him.
”Above you,” the mare sent, a split second afore an eagle’s piercing scream heralded a cloud of buff feathers.
Loren raised the shield over his head barely in time to deflect the talons slashing at his upturned face. The mountain eagle wheeled off, kiting moonward for another dive.
A bowstring twanged from the shadowed ruins. A white-fletched arrow hissed betwixt Loren and the mare. Hani`ena reared. “Second stone, left of the flat fallen one.”
“Got her,” he replied.
Slashing talons crashed into his shield again. The weight staggered him. Unprepared for an all out attack from a full-grown female mountain eagle, his arm sagged. A fierce round golden eye flashed, a hooked beak snapped at his nose. Conscious of her hollow bones, he threw her skyward off his shield with controlled force, not wanting to injure the valiant creature. She shot for the stars again, but he had no doubt she would wheel around for a third pass.
“Moira, cease. It is Loren. Auger Xavier sent me to find you.”
An arrow’s fletching brushed the hair covering his right ear, passing under Hani`ena’s neck. Startled, the mare shied backward with a loud splash. “Too close.” She snorted.
“Liar!” a woman’s voice screamed. Waves of disbelief and sorrow. “Xavier’s dead. They’re all dead.”
“Nay, lady. He lives. I have seen the healer, Dara. She helped Xavier escape. We have been to Jakop’s Crossroads and Artur Barach gave Xavier a horse. Even as we speak Xavier rides southward for help. He brings Hengist and Sezeny back.”
Wariness. Rising hope.
Overhead, the eagle screamed and wheeled.
Loren turned a cautious eye skyward. “I have come from Artur’s to help you home.”
“Xavier canna ride.”
Her mountain brogue, softened by years with Hengist, was back. By stress? he wondered. “I agree he flops about like a crow-scare. Nonetheless he went.”
“If ’tis really ye, ye’ll know what Hengist said t’ye afore he left t’change fer battle.”
“I had no chance to speak to him afore we left. But the night afore, the two of you snuck into my chambers from the secret passage that connects the green guest chambers to the sewing room. You carried the last bottle of your uncle’s drenieval whisky and the changling-glass goblets my cousin Sirona gave you as a wedding present.” Loren cast a jaundiced eye skyward to the huge raptor’s wheeling silhouette. “Call off your feathered guardian. You know I mean no harm.”
“Ealga isna mine t’ command.”
“Behind you,” Hani`ena blasted.
A sharp pricking betwixt his shoulder blades froze Loren in his tracks. How had he missed the other’s presence? Even with all of the emotion roiling off the three females, he should have caught another presence. He opened his heart. Naught. His empathy told him there was no one there, a fact belied by the weapon at his back. He had never encountered a being with enough control to deflect elven empathy. “Who? What?”
“Northern tribesman. War spear.”
“Hands up. Move an’ I’ll skewer ye like a wild boar,” the unknown man stated in the same mountain brogue as Moira. No emotional inflection at all.
“How did you miss him?” Loren sent.
She did not deign to reply.
“Hold, Trys. He’s a friend.” From the growing gloom, Moira slogged toward them, pale and bedraggled. She wore her clan colors of black and grey plaid, further muted by mud, in a knee-length pleated skirt and a loose, long sleeved blouse. A bronze wolf’s head brooch pinned a fringed woolen shawl to her right shoulder. The arrow notched into her bow pointed toward the water.
A huge black wolf-not-wolf shadowed her, his back as high as her waist.
Loren stared at the creature. It curled a lip. Whatever it was, and for all its outward appearance it was not a true-wolf, Loren sensed no evil from it.
“Loren, thank th’ Goddess ye survived.” Moira released her ash bow with one muddied hand and reached out to grasp his.
Bone deep weariness. Numbness from too much fear going on for too long. Both came through her touch. He noticed the broken nails and work-blistered fingers. Her hand trembled in his. She had not had an easy time on her own.
“Loren, ’tis me bossy older brother Trystan. Ealga an’ Niadh here travel with him. Loren, put yer arms down. Trys, ye too.” Moira glared at both of them with flint grey eyes dulled by lack of sleep. “Since ye both appear t’ have th’ same idea, ye might as well dispense with th’ chest-beating an’ turn an’ meet face to face.”
The spear’s touch disappeared and Loren turned to face the man. Ealga plummeted toward them, snapping her wings open at the last moment to land on Trystan’s shoulder. Loren noted the extra padding in the talon-scarred shoulderpads of Trystan’s leather jerkin. He had had her for a long time. “I never met one who commanded the loyalty of both eagle and wolf.”
“I command naught.” Trystan’s posture showed no change from bearing the bird’s considerable weight. “They’re free t’ come an’ go as they will. They stay by choice.”
Loren had never met anyone who either did not experience emotions at all or buried them so deep they could not be sensed.
Moira’s brother was big by mountain man standards, half a head shorter than Loren but more muscular. He stood with the loose easy grace of a born fighter. His tangled shoulder-length hair sported random braiding; both hair and beard were grey. Hard blue eyes stared at Loren. Trystan’s skin was weathered and tanned but paled by ash and decorated by a series of swirling blue tattoos down the left side of his face. A wolf’s head amulet hung about his nec
k on a sinew cord.
Trystan revealed naught. No concern, no curiosity. The picture of perfect control. “We should get ye someplace warm an’ dry,” he told his sister. “Ye need rest.”
Loren caught something else, an intangible sense of “different” from the man. He glanced down at Niadh. It stared back with unlupine intelligence.
“I’m fine.” Looking anything but, Moira tucked a lank strand of sable hair behind her ear.
Loren frowned. “He is right. You need to get someplace warm and dry. You have more than your own health to think about.”
“Me sister can see t’ her own health.”
“You have not told him,” Loren realized.
“Told me what?” The bearded man turned to his sister. “Are ye ill?”
“Naught ye need worry ’bout, Trys. I’ve been dethroned an’ I’m hidin’ in a bug-infested swamp. Me lord husband is Goddess knows where. I’m fine. Couldna be better.”
Loren shook his head. “Enough. We both know your courage. That is not the issue. If you do not tell him, I shall. This is too important.”
Moira flinched. “How d’ye… Who told?”
Trystan frowned. Concern. Worry. Loren caught the first crack in the man’s control. “Ye’d best tell me now, li’l one.”
She sighed. “He’s right. I woulda told ye anyway. I just havena found th’ right time. I’m with child.”
Trystan’s eyes widened and dropped to her still flat stomach. “A bairn?”
Moira nodded. “Midwife Lacey confirmed it just afore—” Her voice wobbled, then she closed her eyes and straightened her narrow shoulders. When she opened her eyes again, her voice had steadied. “Auger Xavier swore it’s—he’s—a son. Hengist planned on namin’ his firstborn Alvar after his grandfather, but he dinna get a chance t’ hear about th’ bairn. I wanted t’ be sure, an’ then th’ battle…” Her voice trailed off.
“Are ye well?” Trystan asked.
“Well ’nough.” She rubbed her hands up and down her arms and changed the subject. “’Twas no time. Jalad struck so quick I barely escaped.” She looked down, ran her fingers through Niadh’s coarse black fur. Waves of dread rolled off her like a dark cloud. “Fare they well, our people?”
